Fluent material handling – with receiver or receiver coacting mea – Capillary type
Patent
1996-09-20
1999-02-02
Recla, Henry J.
Fluent material handling, with receiver or receiver coacting mea
Capillary type
141 89, 141 90, 141 91, 141115, 141116, 239567, 239590, B65B 104, B65B 304, B65B 3100, B67C 300
Patent
active
058652213
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to a valve for filling liquids into packages, with a housing with a supply connection piece, a forward mouthpiece and an outlet device in which a large number of outlet holes is arranged, with a closing body movably arranged in the housing which can be engaged with a valve seat, and sealing devices at the rear.
In practice, various methods and suitable filler mouth pieces and filler valves for them are known for filling containers or packages with liquid foodstuffs. In the most commonly used methods, with very short filling times, a mouth piece is dipped into package to be filled and into the product which has already been put in it. In this way, despite a high production rate, foaming or spraying of the product is avoided. Dripping of the product is normally prevented by means of one or more sieves in the mouth piece so that the surface tension of the product in the sieve holds the weight of the product in the mouth piece. In addition, flexible mouth pieces, for example made from silicon, are known which are closed by means of a low pressure produced in the filler pipe.
When the mouth piece is dipped into the container and when filling is carried out above the level of the product, the filling rate has to be slowed down for highly foaming products, such as milk or the like, in order to limit the formation of foam. The dipping of the filler mouth piece into the product to be filled, and the contact with the inside of the container or the container opening by parts of the filler is undesirable for reasons of hygiene. The dipping of the filler mouth piece in the container is not desirable from an economic point of view, as an additional movement is needed for doing this. Either the container or package has to be lifted, or the filler mouth piece has to be lowered into the container.
In the case of packages with small in-fill openings, the diameter of the in-fill opening limits the diameter of the filler mouth piece and that of the filler pipe. In order to obtain a high volume flow, the flow speed of the product must be increased. This, however, leads to increased foam formation when foamy products are filled in.
Furthermore, filler mouth pieces used in practical operation are usually difficult to clean, as they normally have to be disassembled and cleaned by hand.
It would therefore be desirable to avoid the dipping of filler parts or parts of a filler valve in the container or the package during filling, and to fill the product into the package with a free stream. Several problems would arise with this, however. According to the height of the drop, the product to be filled would be accelerated by gravity, so that with very highly foaming products the filling speed would have to be reduced, which would result, disadvantageously, in a lengthening of the filling time and thereby a reduction in machine capacity.
The object of the invention is therefore to improve a filler valve with the features previously described so that a high volume flow of the liquid filling product with low outlet speed is made possible without relative movement between the package and outlet device.
According to the invention, this object is solved in that the outlet holes distributed over the whole surface of the mouthpiece are arranged in an outlet plate, and penetrate it in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the mouth piece, said outlet plate being configured integrally with the mouthpiece, that the diameter and the width of the outlet holes is greater than 1 mm and less than 5 mm, and that the length of the outlet holes is greater than double their diameter and their width. It has been shown that when the features of this solution according to the invention are taken into consideration, it is possible for liquid products to be filled into a package at a low outlet speed in sufficient quantity when the distance apart between the outlet plate with the outlet holes described and the filler opening in the package remains constant during the filling operation.
This is mainly the result of the configuration of
REFERENCES:
patent: 2893646 (1959-07-01), Batts
patent: 4579156 (1986-04-01), Graffin
patent: 4958669 (1990-09-01), Ohta
patent: 5094278 (1992-03-01), Arao et al.
patent: 5562129 (1996-10-01), Graffin
Ludwig Werner
Sendobry Eberhard
Wolf Michael
Maust Timothy L.
Recla Henry J.
Tetra Laval Holdings & Finance S.A.
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