Elpatronic Ag

Melchior Zumbach

Peter Gysi

Theo Huesser

Peter M Robertson

Felix Van Der Schaar

Martin Mueller

To detect contamination in used PET returnable bottles, they are fed to a first testing station which takes a gas sample from each bottle. This first testing station tests for the presence of heavy contamination. Heavily contaminated bottles are identified as dirty. The bottles are then fed to a second testing station which takes gas samples from the clean bottles and tests them for contamination with a lower detection threshold. Bottles detected here as contaminated are removed, as are the bottles which fail the first test. The two-stage process allows testing with greater sensitivity while maintaining a high bottle throughput.

Apparatus for testing bottles for the presence of contamination

Process and apparatus for testing bottles for the presence of

For testing bottles in particular by mass spectrometric analysis, gas samples are removed simultaneously from several bottles by means of probes. The gas samples are fed in succession and in a predetermined sequence to a mass spectrometer by a distributor unit. In this way, a single mass spectrometer is sufficient for testing a number of bottles thus substantially reducing costs in terms of money, maintenance and calibration time.

Process and apparatus for testing bottles for contamination

Growing community of inventors

Dubendorf, Switzerland

Melchior Zumbach