Adopting ozone in cleaning and disinfection processes can bring various advantages over commonly
employed disinfectants: ozone breaks down quickly into oxygen without leaving undesirable residues,
this is an advantage both from the point of view of food safety and to improve the quality of
wastewaters by avoiding the presence of harmful chlorine compounds; replacing chemical products
with ozone also lowers the concentration of salts and, therefore, the electrical conductivity of
discharges; the use of ozone can save water in comparison to other biocides, as it does not leave
residues it does not require a final rinse to remove any residual disinfectant that might remain, also,
ozonated water, which has been used for disinfection, can potentially be re-used for the initial cleaning
stages. Ozone use could also provide energy savings as it is normally used at low temperatures.
The reduced environmental impact is a significant factor that may favour the future development of
ozone in all countries, especially in Europe. European environmental legislation is increasingly
requiring polluting industries to move to clean technologies. The most important regulation in this
respect is the IPPC Directive, which has considerable relevance and far-reaching effects for the
major European food manufacturers. Directive 96/61/EC concerning Integrated Pollution Prevention
and Control (IPPC) could indirectly encourage ozone use in EU countries, if it was considered a
Best Available Technique (BAT) for food industry disinfection operations. As its name indicates, the
IPPC directive attempts to encourage technologies that reduce pollution, preferably those that do so
at source. For this reason, it refers to BATs as a criterion when granting companies operating
licences. BATs are defined as economically viable, commercially available techniques that enable
competitive levels of quality and productivity to be achieved and are noted for their greater
environmental efficacy. Although industrial installations affected by the IPPC directive are not
obliged to adopt BATs in order to obtain a licence, they are required to achieve environmental
results similar to those of BATs. BAT techniques will therefore have a further point in their favour
when business investment decisions are made, making them more competitive.
Ozonecip is a demonstration project funded by the EC under the LIFE-Environment Programme. Its
objective is the reduction of the environmental impact of cleaning operations through an innovative
technique consisting on the use of ozone as an alternative sanitising agent instead of traditional
chemicals. Among the food industries cleaning procedures, Cleaning In Place (CIP) is considered
as BAT in the European reference documents and “Ozonecip” technique is expected to be more
advanced than the BATs described. This project aims to bridge the gap between research and
development results and widespread implementation/market introduction, identifying the obstacles
leading to solutions to overcome those barriers.