A clean sweep for fluids monitor

After a six-month production trial period at Britvic's soft drinks plant in Leeds, the first Intelligent Pipe system from Kaiku went 'live' at the end of last month.

Based on the Manchester Science Park, Kaiku was set up in 1999 to commercialise a technology developed at UMIST's Department of Instrumentation and Analytical Science (DIAS) by the company's co-founders Drs Richard Dowdeswell and Hassan Amrani. This 'resonance frequency interrogation' method - essentially based on impedance spectroscopy - enables real-time, in-line, non-invasive analysis and monitoring of fluids of all kinds, with a sensitivity that opens up a myriad of potential application areas.

Initially, though, the Intelligent Pipe concept has been brought to production scale as an in-line fluid monitor for the food and drinks industry. According to Kaiku's ceo Graham Partridge, the sensitivity of the system's electronics 'is our core IPR [intellectual property right] the electronics effectively 'sweep' the fluid to pick up its resonant frequency. Once the system is set up at this frequency, you can then monitor the product to look for relatively small changes in chemical composition.'

Although Partridge emphasises that the Intelligent Pipe does not necessarily identify the specific composition of a fluid, the patented technology very accurately identifies any changes, however small, to that composition.

In-house and on-site trials, many of them of a confidential nature, have confirmed the Intelligent Pipe's ability to detect ppm and, in some instances, ppb levels of contaminants.

Apart from the Britvic system, others are on trial at food producers including Heinz and British Sugar. Current production-scale units are of 1 and 2in pipe diameters, but larger units of up to 4in diameter are in development at Kaiku's in-house test facility. The pipes themselves are manufactured from the engineering plastic PEEK (polyether ether ketone), which, as Partridge says, 'is inert and can be machined and polished to the same specification as stainless steel.'

Such mechanical construction, with easy assembly and insertion into existing pipelines, meets the stringent requirements of the food and drinks industry. But as Partridge points out, it's the electronics that are at the core of the technology. And here the requirements of all the process industries have led Kaiku's development strategies.

The system was designed from the outset with dual sets of electrodes and associated circuit boards to provide built-in redundancy. Both boards and related interfacing circuitry are housed integrally with the pipe in a 316 stainless steel, IP65 rated enclosure, while the PC monitor/control unit can be mounted up to 10m away.

The Intelligent Pipe is CIP rated and tested to European Hygienic Design Engineering Group (EHDEG) specification. Partridge says cleaning-in-place is 'an area of particular interest', following a series of high-profile product recalls by some leading names in the drinks industry, due to failures in their CIP systems. 'We've developed some specific applications around 'intelligent cleaning', where we can track the whole cleaning process from start to finish in real-time.'

In the longer-term, the company sees great potential in medical and healthcare applications. For example, the company, in conjunction with Glasgow University, has recently won an EPSRC grant of over £300 000 to develop further a blood cell separation system. Using the same technology, but with a 'pipe' of just 10micron in diameter, the system is seen as a possible alternative to amniocentesis in testing for Down's Syndrome.

If there is any cloud on the Kaiku horizon, it is the silver-lined one of having to focus, initially at least, on just a few of the many possible uses for its technology. It is looking for partners for some of these, including a portable system for product authenticity testing, but with its first reference site now fully on line it is gearing up for full production of the Intelligent Pipe system.