Infographic: How Pigging Helps the Environment

The Positive Environmental Impact of Product Recovery (PIGGING) systems

Hygienic or Sanitary Pigging (also known as liquid product recovery) is a highly effective method of recovering product and cleaning pipes in liquid processing systems. It’s used in a wide range of industries, encompassing products like food and beverages, paints, household essentials, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, personal care items, lubricants, and many more.

Wide Variety of Benefits

Implementing pigging systems significantly enhances operations for companies involved in processing liquids. The basic purpose of pigging is to remove or recover residual liquid left in a pipeline or tubing after transferring liquid from one location to another.

HPS advanced pigging systems have an exceptional capability of reclaiming up to 99.5% of product from full pipelines. This recovered product, which would otherwise go to waste, is nearly always in a useable condition. This means businesses using pigging can sell the recovered product, leading to immediate cost savings and profit boosts.

In addition to reclaiming product, pigging also improves process efficiency by enabling faster changeover times, reducing labour costs, and minimising downtime, among other benefits.

Environmental Benefits of Pigging

When HPS first started back in 1995, the most common reasons businesses gave for deploying pigging systems were based on efficiency and productivity gains. However, with the growing environmental consciousness among manufacturers, there’s been a significant shift. Many organisations now integrate pigging systems not only to enhance efficiency but also to decrease their carbon footprint and improve their environmental credentials.

It’s important to note that they are also increasing profits at the same time. So, with hygienic pigging, increased profits and improved environmental credentials are not mutually exclusive.

Reducing Cleaning Agent and Water Use

Depending on the application, modern pipeline cleaning technology often rely heavily on substantial water consumption and various cleaning agents. These agents, including chlorine dioxide, chlorine gas, hypochlorites (such as potassium, sodium, and calcium), and peracetic acid, while effective sanitisers, pose safety risks due to their corrosive nature. Therefore, they require stringent safety protocols. Because pigging reduces the amount of cleaning agents used, it significantly improves safety and reduces environmental risks.

Additionally, the disposal of waste product resulting from cleaning processes incurs considerable expenses. It needs transport, and uses considerable amounts of resources and energy. So, by reducing the use of cleaning agents, using less water, and lowering the amount of product going to waste, pigging systems have a positive environmental impact.

This infographic illustrates some of the ways in which pigging helps the environment:

Report by Net-Zero on HPS Pigging

The environmental benefits of pigging is also evident in a report by Carbon-Zero.

An independent report by consultancy company Carbon-Zero shows that companies that process liquids can reduce their carbon footprint by tonnes of carbon every day and lower environmental impact by using HPS liquid product recovery (pigging) technology.

Using water-based and solvent-based paint production as examples, the report demonstrates that around 2.68 tonnes (or 99.3%)  of carbon dioxide equivalent is saved every time there’s a product changeover.

While the exact CO2e reduction varies across systems and products, implementing HPS pigging systems can notably impact a company’s carbon footprint and enhance the sustainability of their operations.

Contact HPS

For more information about Hygienic or Sanitary Pigging systems, please contact HPS.

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