Arai Machinery Corporation

The food and beverage industry is facing increasing demands for improved production outcomes where products are rich in taste, odorless, and have a long shelf life with protected nutritional value. In this scenario, the industry is striving hard to tackle the contamination of food items during the processing stage. Facility operators need superior, automation-based filtration systems to check contamination proactively and meet the customer demands and necessary compliance mandates.
A manufacturer of parts for precision equipment since its inception almost a hundred years ago, Arai Machinery Corporation moved into manufacturing filtration equipment for the food and beverage industry. The Japanese company, Arai, addresses the biggest challenge that the filtration industry faces on a daily basis—clogging of materials of different sizes in the filter media and at different key areas of the filtering equipment. Clogging may result in unnecessary damage to expensive equipment, which, in turn, may lead to downtime. To address this menace, the company has developed its solutions portfolio from the ground up to support safe and secure processing of food and beverages while filtering out only unwanted materials.

In a case study, Arai has contributed to developing an automatic self-cleaning filter for liquid egg products. The system easily filters out contaminants such as chalaza, meat spots, and eggshell particles, which often stick to the filter media. Yoshinori Arai, Sales Manager of Arai, explains, “Frequent replacing or washing of the filter media due to clogging might result in high labor cost or downtime. Also, the filter media gets clogged because of its decreasing accuracy over time. While using fine holes or mesh may increase the chances of clogging, opting for larger mesh may not filter the contaminants at all. Focused on simple and small self-cleaning filter system, Arai addresses this problem with its equipment that has a 20-micron slit gap in the filter media, so clients achieve steady and continuous operations with maximum benefits.

Be it fine particles, high solid concentration, or high viscosity, Arai’s filtration equipment eliminate all the unwanted particles in the food, so the industry can provide well-strained functional food items like fruit purees, fruit jam and propolis.

The equipment can easily squeeze and control pulp content in various fruits, vegetables, and also filter brine, tea, and coffee extracts. They ensure an automated filtration process with high levels of filtrate quality and productivity. Besides, they maintain consistent filtration accuracy in the order of microns.

Arai’s filtration equipment, W-CELL Filter, has a flat surface and an automated scraper system that promises continuous clog-free particulate size classification and solidliquid separation as the minimum slit gap is three microns. The scraper and the triangular wire are coiled on the core, which improves the filtering power. As the entire element is manufactured from stainless steel, the filter can easily withstand high pressure, high temperature, and permanent usage. Considering the cost of filtration equipment, Arai’s solution is more economical than the disposable filters. Moreover, it is easier to clean the machine and change filter liquids. W-CELL Filter differentiates in the market for its high production yield and filtrate accuracy.
For continuous solid-liquid separation filtration, Arai offers MM-2 Horizontal Filter Screw Press—an advanced triangular filter and screw transfer technology. It is a fully enclosed structure that protects the filtered liquid from acid deterioration and mixing-in of venomous fungi. Its clog-free mechanism helps deliver high-quality liquid. Arai’s other modern technology termed MM-2 [VC series] Filter Screw Press has been designed to extract rich, natural quality juice. No feed pump is required in this equipment as only gravity feeding from the upper tank can produce soft and mellow fruit and vegetable juice and puree.

Arai has focused on back-straining and de-foaming without high-speed spinning and vacuum. The company’s recent and specialty model, MM-2 Horizontal Filter Screw Press, is adapted for back straining. The MM-2 Ultra-Refiner has an M-CELL element with a slit gap between 30 μm and 500 μm, and the MM-2 Super-Finisher contains an X-CELL element with a hole diameter between 0.5 mm and 3.0 mm. Using a 30 μm slit element with simultaneous de-foaming enhances the quality of products and fluidity of the material at the time of filling.

Going ahead, Arai will ceaselessly solve the filtration issues of its clients from the food and beverage, cosmetics, chemical industries. “Our smart filters are easy to operate and maintain. Moreover, they are accurate and productive. So, it pays to use our next generation filtration solutions for our clients to accelerate their production output and improve the business bottom line,” concludes Arai.