The Filling Technology of Liquid Food (Part One)

With the rapid development of the liquid food industry, the filling technology of liquid food has also developed rapidly. The filling technology of liquid food mainly includes hot filling and cold-aseptic filling. The two filling technologies will be described in detail below.

1. Hot filling

Hot filling is a filling technology that liquid food is filled in a hot state after sterilization, and the inner surface of the container is sterilized by the heat of liquid food. Hot filling can be divided into two types: one is hot filling at high temperature, and the other is that the product is pasteurized by heating it to the temperature between 65℃ and 75℃ after filling at medium temperature. The hot filling technology doesn’t have to sterilize the bottle and cap separately, because they can be sterilized by keeping the product at high temperature for a long time.

2. Cold-aseptic filling

Cold-aseptic filling refers to the process of bottling at ambient temperatures under aseptic conditions. The key control points of cold-aseptic filling mainly include the following three. 

• formation and control of the sterile environment
• formation and control of the asepsis of packaging containers
• formation and control of the asepsis of products

• The products are sterilized by ultra-high temperature instantaneous sterilization (UHT) to achieve commercial sterilization.
• Packaging materials and airtight containers should be sterilized separately.
• The filling equipment should be sterilized.
• Filling and sealing should be carried out in the sterile environment.
• Strictly control the production process.