NEWS

VLS Technologies is proud to announce that its Unico solution (an all-in-one filtration system for beverage and liquid foods), has been awarded the New Technology award at SIMEI 2017. It is an important international recognition for VLS Technologies and confirms the innovation of their cross-flow technology (following a 2015 award also for innovation in cross-flow technology). VLS Technologies’ CEO Jacopo Velo; “This recognition awards the know-how of our company, with more that 30-year experience in the filtration and treatment of liquids for the wine market. It also awards our courage in investing in research and innovation. In order to emerge in the global market, it is necessary to anticipate the needs of clients offering solutions capable of improving their product and efficiency’’.

The “Unico” filter is meant for small/medium producers who need to filter their products (wine and lees) with one solution only. It provides a high-quality filtrate with turbidity lower than 1 NTU. The filtering media used can withstand repeated regenerations with hot water and detergents. All models come in the semi-automatic or automatic version. In the latter, the PLC handles all the phases – filling, filtration, cleaning – and constantly monitors all parameters without any need for the operator’s intervention.

VLS Technologies’ juice filtration solutions support a fast-growing sector

The global market for juice is expanding. Although the largest juice markets are in China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, other countries are expecting large annual growth in the upcoming years. Fruit and vegetable juices have begun gaining more popularity as health and dietary concerns also grow. VLS Technologies design various technologies for the filtration and treatment of food liquids and recently established two new partnerships.

The agreement with a foremost Indian producer of fruit juices included delivery of two rotary vacuum filters with a surface of 25 sqm to filter apple juice. The rotary vacuum filters were designed for the filtration of products with high content in solids through the usage of filtering adjuvant substances. For the Italian company a totally automatic 30-cartridge Pluma filter for the filtration of grape juice was supplied.  Pluma filters (HPL) are micro-filtration cartridge technologies that can treat the product avoiding the usage of adjuvant substances. Completely made with stainless steel, it is equipped with a PLC for the management and monitoring of the operation and washing stages, housing for filtering cartridges, pumps and tools for the correct operation. One of their advantages is represented by the possibility to use cartridges with different porousness that make possible to filter in various steps to obtained the requested density. The range goes from 3 to 30 cartridges but on request different sizes are available.

VLS Technologies was awarded the New Technology award at SIMEI 2015 for “Lees-stop”, a cross-flow solution for the filtration of products with high solids content (replacing traditional polymeric membranes of the cross-flow filters with stainless steel membranes). It allows for cross-flow filtration of difficult to treat products with concentration up to 95% V/V on the outlet.

Very good results have been achieved with fruit juices and the technology is also ideal for the treatment of ‘’tank bottoms’’. Equipped with stainless steel membranes adapted to handle materials susceptible to clogging, the membranes have the characteristics to be long lasting and resistant to pressure, temperature and chemicals. Tank bottoms are filtered through a series of 2 to 8 membranes of 7.5 m² each. The filter is entirely automatic and only requires monitoring. The Lees -Stop effectively free users from the daily use of rotary drum vacuum filters. The filtrate is perfectly clear (< 1 NTU) and can directly be added into the filtered batch without undergoing any additional treatment. Filtration is more productive than with a rotary drum vacuum filter as it will not cause loss of quality (or alcohol) and provides better recovery rates. Residues still containing alcohol can easily be vaporized during distillation.