Maintenance Specifications and Technical Development Trends of SLG Series Percolation Tanks

As core process equipment applied in the fields of traditional Chinese medicine, natural product extraction and fine chemical engineering, SLG series percolation tanks achieve gentle and efficient extraction of active ingredients from raw materials based on the working principles of static percolation, slow infiltration and gradient dissolution. Featuring high extraction purity, wide process adaptability and low material loss, the equipment is extensively adopted in pharmaceutical, food, daily chemical and fine chemical industries. The operational stability and process accuracy of the equipment directly determine product quality and production efficiency. Standardized and regular maintenance serves as a core foundation for stabilizing equipment operating conditions, extending service life and eliminating potential production risks. With the popularization of intelligent manufacturing and green production concepts, SLG series percolation tanks are undergoing iterative upgrades toward intelligent management and control, energy conservation and consumption reduction, and modular integration. This paper systematically elaborates on the standardized maintenance system, fault prevention and control key points, and industrial technical development trends of the equipment.

1. Refined Maintenance and Standardized Maintenance System of Equipment

The maintenance of SLG series percolation tanks adheres to the core principle of "prevention first, periodic management and full coverage". Combined with the structural characteristics of the equipment, the maintenance system is divided into three modules: daily inspection and maintenance, periodic in-depth maintenance, and shutdown and storage maintenance, covering all components including the tank structure, sealing system, transmission system, measurement and control system, and pipeline filtration system. It effectively avoids process deviation, equipment failures and potential safety hazards caused by inadequate maintenance.

1.1 Daily Operational Maintenance

Daily maintenance is routine basic equipment operation and maintenance, which is carried out synchronously with production batches to ensure stable real-time operating conditions of the equipment. First, inspect the appearance and tank body. Before daily production, check that no corrosion, damage or scaling accumulation exists on the welds and inner liner of the tank, no leakage or deformation occurs on the tank body, and the equipment support and fixed base are firmly installed without looseness, so as to prevent local corrosion caused by material residue accumulation. Second, verify the sealing system. Focus on checking sealing points such as the tank cover, manhole, discharge port and pipeline flanges, and confirm that rubber gaskets and sealing rings are free from aging, deformation, cracking and hardening, ensuring no solvent leakage or pressure leakage and maintaining the tightness of the percolation process. Third, calibrate measurement and control components. Monitor the readings of pressure gauges, vacuum gauges, temperature sensors, liquid level controllers and other instruments in real time to ensure accurate and stable numerical display, no looseness or damage of instrument wiring, and normal operation of indicator lights and operation panels of the electric control system. Fourth, maintain pipelines and filtration devices. Check that the inlet and outlet liquid pipelines and valves are unobstructed without blockage, flexible in opening and closing and well sealed, and clean material residues on the filter surface to prevent filter screen blockage from affecting percolation flow rate and extraction uniformity. Fifth, monitor operational conditions. Control the internal tank temperature, pressure and percolation rate in real time during production, strictly avoid overpressure, overtemperature and overspeed operation, record equipment operating parameters, and establish routine operation and maintenance ledgers.

1.2 Periodic In-depth Maintenance

A hierarchical in-depth maintenance plan covering monthly, quarterly and annual cycles is formulated based on equipment operation frequency, material characteristics and production conditions to eliminate latent equipment hazards and stabilize long-term operational performance.

Monthly maintenance focuses on wearing parts management and cleaning maintenance. Completely disassemble and clean filters, filter screens and throttling components to remove residual medicinal residues, colloids and scaling impurities in pipelines and the tank body; apply special lubricating grease to movable parts such as transmission hinges and valve rotating shafts of the equipment to avoid stalling and wear; comprehensively inspect the status of all sealing parts and replace slightly aged and deformed sealing accessories in advance to prevent potential leakage risks.

Quarterly maintenance emphasizes system verification and performance calibration. Calibrate the accuracy of all measurement and control instruments to correct detection deviations of temperature, pressure and liquid level and ensure precise and controllable process parameters; inspect the patency of the cooling system and heat exchange pipelines, clean scale and impurities in condensers to guarantee qualified heat exchange and cooling efficiency; detect the safety of electrical control circuits, terminal blocks and grounding devices, eliminate hidden dangers such as circuit aging, insulation damage and poor contact to ensure stable operation of the electrical system; inspect the anti-corrosion coating and metal contact surfaces of the tank body and perform partial coating repair to delay equipment corrosion and aging.

Annual maintenance refers to systematic full-equipment overhaul. Conduct non-destructive testing on the tank body to verify the structural integrity of the inner liner, welds and pressure-bearing parts and detect fatigue damage and latent cracks; fully disassemble valves, pipelines and transmission components for in-depth cleaning and wear detection, and replace all aged wearing parts; debug and calibrate the overall operating parameters of the equipment, optimize the percolation control logic, and restore the rated working performance of the equipment; synchronously complete the detection and optimization of control system software to ensure stable collaborative operation of equipment software and hardware. For multi-variety production conditions, perform circulating cleaning inside the tank with 4% sodium hydroxide solution after each material batch replacement to completely remove residual materials, avoid cross-contamination and ensure production compliance.

1.3 Shutdown and Storage Maintenance

Special maintenance operations shall be performed before long-term shutdown and seasonal storage of the equipment to avoid static corrosion and aging failure of components. Firstly, thoroughly clean the inner cavity, pipelines and filter components of the tank to remove all material residues and cleaning waste liquid, ensuring the interior of the equipment is dry without water accumulation or impurities. Secondly, disassemble detachable accessories such as sealing parts and filter screens, clean and store them separately in a dry and ventilated environment to prevent deformation under long-term pressure and moisture aging. Thirdly, apply protective grease to exposed metal parts and transmission structures for anti-rust and anti-corrosion treatment. Fourthly, close all pipeline valves and seal equipment inlet and outlet ports to prevent dust and sundries from entering the equipment. Finally, cut off the total power supply of the equipment, inspect the storage status regularly, and conduct a no-load trial operation every month to activate equipment components and avoid mechanical stalling and circuit moisture faults caused by long-term static placement.

2. Common Fault Troubleshooting and Operation & Maintenance Precautions

During long-term operation, SLG series percolation tanks are prone to common faults such as sealing leakage, abnormal flow rate, parameter deviation and low heat exchange efficiency due to material characteristics, operational specifications and maintenance quality. A standardized rapid troubleshooting and disposal mechanism shall be established to reduce unplanned shutdown duration. Sealing leakage is mostly caused by aging sealing parts, misinstallation and scaling and wear on contact surfaces, which shall be disposed by cleaning impurities on sealing contact surfaces, replacing matching sealing accessories and standardizing installation processes to ensure tight sealing fit. Abnormal percolation flow rate is generally induced by filter screen blockage, pipeline scaling and abnormal valve opening, requiring disassembly and cleaning of filter components and pipelines, dredging of blocked points and calibration of valve control accuracy. Deviations of temperature and pressure parameters are mainly caused by sensor failure, instrument inaccuracy and heat exchange system blockage, which need calibration or replacement of measurement and control elements and cleaning of scale and impurities in heat exchange pipelines. Equipment operational abnormal noise and stalling mainly result from insufficient lubrication and loose components of transmission parts, requiring supplementary lubrication, fastening of connecting parts and inspection of mechanical wear.

All operation and maintenance procedures must comply with safety and compliance specifications. Overhaul, cleaning and commissioning operations shall be carried out under power-off, pressure-relief and temperature-reduction conditions, and pressurized and electrified operations are prohibited. Over-parameter operation of the equipment is strictly forbidden to avoid potential safety hazards such as over-bearing pressure and overtemperature of the tank body. All maintenance, overhaul and fault disposal processes shall be fully recorded to establish a full-life-cycle operation and maintenance file of the equipment, providing data support for equipment condition analysis, component replacement and process optimization, and meeting the GMP production management requirements of pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries.

3. Future Technical Development Trends of SLG Series Percolation Tanks

Against the industrial background of intelligent manufacturing, dual-carbon policy, green production and refined process upgrading, SLG series percolation tanks are gradually breaking away from the traditional manual control and extensive operation mode, and iterating toward intelligent precise control, energy conservation and green consumption reduction, modular integration and automatic operation and maintenance, adapting to the core requirements of high efficiency, standardization, digitization and low carbonization of modern production.

3.1 Intelligent Digital Control Upgrade

Digitization and intelligence are the core development directions of percolation equipment. Traditional SLG percolation tanks rely heavily on manual operation and manual recording, resulting in low parameter control accuracy, poor batch process consistency and lagging maintenance. In the future, the equipment will be fully equipped with PLC intelligent control systems and IoT data acquisition modules to realize automatic and precise regulation of core parameters such as percolation temperature, pressure, flow rate, liquid level and time. It can adaptively match percolation process curves according to the characteristics of different materials, effectively improving the extraction rate of active ingredients and batch production consistency. Meanwhile, cloud data platforms support real-time data acquisition, remote monitoring, abnormal early warning and fault tracing of equipment operating data. The system can independently optimize process parameters and cleaning cycles based on historical operating data to realize AI intelligent operation and maintenance prediction, greatly reducing manual intervention costs and unplanned shutdown time. At present, the market share of intelligent percolation equipment in the industry continues to rise, and digital control has become a standard configuration for equipment iteration.

3.2 Energy Conservation, Consumption Reduction and Green Process Optimization

Guided by the dual-carbon policy, green energy conservation has become an important indicator for the technical iteration of SLG series percolation tanks. Traditional equipment has problems such as high heat exchange energy consumption, large solvent loss and excessive cleaning wastewater. Future technical upgrades will focus on energy consumption optimization and resource recovery. On the one hand, optimize the heat exchange structure and tank insulation structure of the equipment, upgrade high-efficiency heat exchange components to reduce heat loss and improve energy utilization efficiency. On the other hand, optimize the design of the percolation circulation loop and adopt a bidirectional circulation percolation system to improve solvent utilization rate and reduce organic solvent consumption and material loss. In addition, integrated closed-loop cleaning, waste liquid recovery and waste heat recovery systems are adopted to realize resource utilization of production waste, reduce production energy consumption and environmental protection treatment costs, and conform to the industrial development requirements of green production and low-carbon emission reduction.

3.3 Modular Integration and Multi-functional Integration

Modern production is characterized by multi-variety, small-batch and flexible production, which puts forward higher requirements for equipment adaptability and integration. In the future, SLG series percolation tanks will adopt a modular structural design to realize the integrated integration of percolation, infiltration, circulation, cleaning, filtration, concentration pretreatment and other functional modules. The equipment configuration can be quickly adjusted according to different production processes and material types without large-scale modification of the main equipment structure, which significantly improves the flexible production capacity of the equipment. Meanwhile, the standardized modular design reduces the costs of equipment maintenance, component replacement and equipment upgrading, shortens the production switching cycle, and adapts to the flexible production needs of pharmaceutical and fine chemical enterprises.

3.4 Automatic Operation & Maintenance and Safety System Upgrade

Intelligent equipment operation and maintenance and refined safety management and control are important future development directions. The new generation of SLG percolation tanks will be equipped with intelligent sensing monitoring systems to collect real-time data such as equipment vibration, temperature, current, sealing status and pipeline pressure, realizing early warning of hidden dangers and accurate fault location and replacing the traditional manual inspection mode. Meanwhile, the equipment safety interlock protection mechanism will be improved to realize automatic shutdown, alarm and pressure relief under abnormal working conditions such as overpressure, overtemperature, leakage and overload, so as to comprehensively improve equipment operation safety. In addition, the equipment will be equipped with a standardized automatic cleaning system to realize online circulating cleaning and full-automatic sterilization, eliminate cleaning deviation and cross-contamination risks caused by manual cleaning, and meet the stringent production standards of high-end pharmaceutical and precision chemical industries.

4. Conclusion

The stable and efficient operation of SLG series percolation tanks relies on a standardized, regular and refined maintenance system. Scientific operation and maintenance management can not only effectively extend the service life of equipment, reduce failure rate and production and maintenance costs, but also ensure the stability of extraction processes and consistency of product quality, serving as an important foundation for enterprise safe and compliant production. Under the background of industrial technical upgrading, SLG series percolation tanks will continue to undergo in-depth iteration toward digital intelligence, green energy conservation, functional integration and operation and maintenance automation, further improving equipment production efficiency, process accuracy and safety and environmental protection levels, and providing core equipment support for the high-quality development of natural product extraction, fine chemical and other industries. In the future, equipment operation and maintenance will transform from the traditional passive maintenance mode to a predictive, digital and intelligent full-life-cycle operation and maintenance management mode to maximize equipment value.

Jinzong Enterprise has been focusing on the design and manufacturing of chemical, food, and pharmaceutical machinery and equipment, the development of intelligent control systems, and engineering design and installation for over 20 years. The company has a design and marketing service center in Guangzhou and operates two production factories in the Zhaoqing National High-tech Zone. Jinzong holds the qualification for manufacturing special equipment pressure vessels and the pressure piping installation qualification (GC2). It is a National High-tech Enterprise and a Provincial Specialized and Sophisticated “Little Giant” Enterprise. The company has established a Provincial Engineering Technology Research Center and owns two Guangdong Provincial Famous Brand Products, as well as dozens of product patents, software copyrights, and provincial high-tech products. Jinzong has passed the National Intellectual Property Management Standardization Certification, ISO9001:2015 International Quality System Certification, and EU CE Certification. For many consecutive years, it has been rated as a “Guangdong Province Contract-abiding and Promise-keeping Enterprise” by the Guangdong Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce. Its customers are spread across more than 50 countries and regions worldwide, and it has gained recognition and support from over 2,000 enterprises both domestically and internationally. As the saying goes, “A craftsman must sharpen his tools to do a good job.” Jinzong Enterprise, adhering to the philosophy of “Quality as Gold, Craftsmanship as Our Core,” provides advanced and automated production lines to manufacturing factories. Domestic and overseas friends are warmly welcome to visit and guide us!