Overview of Mineral Water Production Line
A complete mineral water production line is a highly automated system that integrates water collection treatment, bottle blowing, filling, and packaging. Its core goal is to safely and efficiently package natural mineral water into bottles, label them, and pack them into boxes under absolutely hygienic conditions.
The entire process can be roughly divided into four main parts:
Water treatment system - ensuring safe and stable water quality.
Empty bottle preparation system - manufacturing PET plastic bottles.
Filling and capping system - the core process of completing filling and capping.
Post packaging system - labeling, coding, and boxing.
1、 Water treatment system
This is the 'soul' of mineral water production, ensuring that the product meets national drinking water standards and maintains its natural characteristics.
Raw water tank: stores natural mineral water extracted from the water source.
Multi level filtering unit:
Quartz sand filter: removes large particle impurities such as suspended solids, sediment, colloids, etc. from water.
Activated carbon filter: adsorbs discoloration, odor, residual chlorine, organic matter, etc. in water.
Precision filters: typically using 5 μ m or 1 μ m filter cartridges as the front protection for reverse osmosis systems, removing finer particles.
Core purification unit:
UV sterilizer: uses ultraviolet light to destroy the DNA of bacteria and viruses in water, achieving instantaneous sterilization effect without chemical residue.
Ozone sterilization system: Ozone is a strong oxidant with high sterilization efficiency and can effectively remove iron and manganese ions. It can also disinfect empty bottles and bottle caps before filling.
Ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis system:
Attention: According to national regulations, it is generally not allowed to use technologies such as reverse osmosis to alter the mineral composition of natural mineral water. Therefore, this part is mainly used for treating source water with unstable water quality or requiring adjustment, or for producing purified drinking water. Mineral water production focuses more on sterilization and retention of minerals.
Aseptic water storage tank: stores processed and sterile mineral water ready for filling. The tank body is usually made of stainless steel and equipped with an air respirator to prevent microbial contamination.
2、 Empty bottle preparation system
In order to save transportation costs and space, modern production lines commonly use "one-step" or "two-step" blow molding machines to manufacture PET bottles online.
PET injection molding machine: Process PET raw materials into preforms.
Fully automatic bottle blowing machine:
Workflow: Send the preform into the bottle blowing machine through the elevator ->Heat the preform ->Blow the softened preform into the desired bottle shape through high-pressure clean air ->Transfer the finished bottle directly to the filling machine through the air duct.
Advantages: Avoiding external pollution, flexible and variable bottle shapes, saving costs and space for storing and cleaning bottles.
3、 Filling and capping system
This is the 'heart' of the production line, typically operating in a clean air pressure environment of 10000 or 100000 levels.
Bottle flushing filling capping three in one unit:
Fully automatic bottle flushing machine: using treated sterile water or ozone water, invert and flush empty bottles from the bottle blowing machine to ensure that the bottles are sterile and dust-free.
Fully automatic filling machine:
Isobaric filling: This is the standard process for carbonated beverages and carbonated mineral water. First fill the empty bottle with carbon dioxide at the same pressure as the liquid reservoir, and then fill it naturally according to the liquid level difference, which can effectively prevent carbon dioxide escaping and foam generation.
Atmospheric pressure filling: mainly used for pure water or mineral water without gas, directly filled by gravity or pumping.
Fully automatic capping machine: automatically sorts and removes caps, and precisely tightens the bottle cap onto the bottle mouth.
4、 Post packaging system
Lamp inspection equipment: detects impurities, foreign objects, or insufficient filling level in bottles manually or automatically using high-speed cameras with strong light background.
Blow drying/air drying machine: Use strong wind to blow away the moisture on the surface of the bottle, making it easier for subsequent labeling and coding.
Labeling machine:
Function: Accurately attach shrink or adhesive labels to the bottle body.
Type: Roll coating, suction coating and other methods can be selected according to the bottle type.
Inkjet printer: Print production date, batch number, shelf life and other information on the bottle body or label.
Membrane packaging machine/packing machine:
Membrane packaging machine: Wrap several bottles of water (such as 6 or 12 bottles) with shrink film to form a sales unit.
Packing machine: Automatically pack products or single bottles of water wrapped in film into cardboard boxes.
Stacking robot: Automatically and neatly stack finished boxes on pallets for easy forklift transportation and storage.