ALBANY, GA -- MillerCoors strives each year to reduce energy. In 2010, the first trial rinser was installed and changed the old way of production. Every process, from filling to packaging, has to be measured and exact. They are the first brewery in the United States to put in the air rinsers in for the Miller system and will continue to add ionic rinsers to their lines and others across the country.
Cans and bottles come from the manufacturer and need to be separated. Once separated, they are cleaned and filled and sent to be packaged.
In the past, static cling has been a huge problem in cleaning cans and has slowed down production.
David Dixon, an Environmental Health and Safety Specialist says that it is important to "make sure there’s nothing in your can before you put the beer in it. The empty can comes down, it's turned upside down and the blast of ionic air is blown into the can; the particles fall out and they are vacuumed away and the can continues right-side up again and gets filled in our filling machine."
In the old days, MillerCoors used water rinsing to clean cans of debris before they are sent on to be filled. Today's ionic rinsers do the same job as a water rinser; the only difference is that it saves two to three million gallons of water each year while cleaning cans.
An air rinser has the advantage that it never uses any water plus the water that drips out of the cans doesn’t get on the conveyors and make the conveyor stick so the cans move more freely through the rails. This has helped speed up the process of cleaning and now, not only is MillerCoors saving energy and conserving water, they are also producing more.
The MillerCoors green initiative projects have an energy savings of about 6.5% for the year.
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