NEXT TIME YOU’RE SHOPPING, HERE’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT…..

Picture yourself in the grocery store or supermarket, merrily enjoying (!) a leisurely shopping trip. ?

You pick up, say, a tin of soup, a couple of ready meals, a carton of juice, some hummus, soy sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, another dip, perhaps a few cans of cola, some chocolate, maybe a bottle of wine.

Hmmm, now don’t forget you’re getting low on toothpaste, so put that in your basket.

And while you’re there you may as well get some more shampoo, shower gel, hand sanitizer, some dog food, some cat food.

Oops, you nearly forgot – better go back a couple of aisles and get some cooking oil.

Plus, some dishwasher fluid, fabric conditioner, oh and that stuff to clean your car with, plus that oil for your bike ….and the kitchen cleaner and window cleaning spray.

Ahhh! You nearly forgot that syrup and jar of honey didn’t you!!!

Do they sell paint here? No? Oh never mind, that can wait for the next trip to the hardware store.

Anyway, so you’ve picked up all these groceries - I hope you’ve bought plenty of carrier bags with you!

What do all these different types of groceries have in common?

Well, in the video below, the blue projectile you can see travelling through the pipe is called a ‘pig’.

What the pig is doing is pushing the blue product out of the pipeline - recovering the blue product in the pipeline so it can be packaged, stored or continue to be processed.

The blue product could be any of the products mentioned earlier (or just about any other product you come across which is a liquid or was a liquid or had a liquid added to it during its manufacture….) which you put in your imaginary shopping bags. ?

If it isn’t “pigged”, then on batch changeovers during manufacture, the company making the product will often lose it– send it to waste treatment or even down the drain.

Notice not only how quick the process is, but also that there’s no trace of any liquid in the pipe after the pig has gone through.

The video is of a demonstration rig, but in ‘real life’ industrial environments, pigging massively reduces product waste, makes changing over from one type of product to another much quicker, saves water, energy, and cleaning chemicals, lowers the amount of effluent created and the associated treatment, transport and disposal costs, while improving environmental sustainability.

So companies that process liquids and use pigging get a significant ROI from their investment (ie profit) while also helping the environment.

Which helps keep the cost of things down.

That’s why pigging is used in such a wide range of industries

And is something to think about next time you’re shopping!

HPS Product Recovery Solutions are the worlds leading liquid product recovery (pigging) system experts for hygienic (sanitary) and process applications.

If you work for a company that processes liquids and want to find out more, please put something in the comments or send me a LinkedIn message.