The Most Scientific Method for Wine Bottle Sterilization

Important role in wine bottle cleaning

As one of the powerful oxidizing agents, ozone is widely used at present. It is a kind of high efficiency and broad spectrum fungicide. Due to its non-toxic, harmless, without any residue characteristics, ozone is known as the current world clean sterilization agent.

Ozone is widely used in various fields of food industry and in general is divided into space sterilization, packaging, sterilization, sterilization equipment. In the wine production process, in order to make wine keep higher quality and store longer, wine bottles and corks disinfection purification process become a very important process.

Using ozone water to disinfect wine bottle is one of the most advanced technology. Because ozone is reduced to oxygen and water after sterilization, there is no chemical residue. Ozone is a highly efficient broad-spectrum disinfectant, which can kill the air, water and wine of Escherichia coli, mold, yeast, aflatoxin and pathogenic bacteria. When ozone water concentration is right, its bactericidal capacity is higher than ultraviolet, chlorine dioxide, potassium permanganate, formaldehyde (formalin), sulfur dioxide (sulfur fumigation) and other chemical disinfectants.

Three problems of traditional disinfection process

Traditional wine bottles and bottle sterilization process adopt chemical disinfectants sulfur dioxide, sulfuric acid, and chlorine. However, there are problems of chemical residues in chemical disinfectant. Chemicals not only have a corrosive effect, but also lead to human allergies. What’s worse, it may cause asthma. A small amount of chemical disinfectant will also lead to changes in the taste of wine.

In the process of producing high quality wine, the concentration of the residual chemical substances after cleaning and disinfection of wine bottles is not measured by ppm, but by ppb. So, even if a bottle of wine after a small amount of chemical disinfectant cleaning and disinfection, the bottle surface may also have dozens or even hundreds of ppb, the culprit is the wine bottle disinfection process residual trace chemical disinfectants. There exist the following problems in conventional flush bottle sterilization process:

a.   Unstability and high concentration of sulfite affect the wine quality.

b.    Lack of concentration cannot achieve sterilization effect.

c.    It causes severe pollution to the environment.

In order to improve the wine quality and avoid the residue of chemical disinfectant, some wine enterprises use hot water to clean the wine bottle. However, in the actual process, the hot water disinfection effect is poor and cannot achieve the wine bottle aseptic status, affecting long-term storage of wine quality.

Ozone water disinfection advantages: green and efficient

Ozone sterilization and disinfection function is unlike that of general sterilizing agent. The effect of general sterilizing agent is accumulative and progressive, while the effect of ozone disinfection is rapid. When the concentration exceeds a certain threshold, disinfection and sterilization can be accomplished instantaneously. Ozone is by virtue of this powerful, rapid oxidation of the ability to achieve the purpose of killing microorganisms.

Using ozone water disinfection technology not only can prevent allergy, but also brewed without cause asthma symptoms containing sulfite components of wine. The use of ozone water technology will not lead to changes in the taste of wine. There is no secondary pollution and residue in ozone disinfection sterilization process. It can be directly used in the production of wine disinfection process and is a rare wine production in the cold sterilization agent and also a green disinfectant.