9. Conclusion

The treatment of kegs with built-in plunger is a difficult case, especially when it comes to cleaning these containers, with the plunger in place throughout packaging and keg flow at the user's premises. This is all the more the case as treatment times are much shorter than those used for bottle washing, and this treatment is carried out blind, which means that on return to the brewery, the integrity of the position of the plunger on the keg must be checked and, between each packaging function, the elements used for cleaning and sterilization must be completely emptied.

Efficient thermal sterilization is not intellectually satisfying, and in the near future we'll need effective cleaning controls to avoid thermal "bludgeoning", which is compulsory today, but which causes damage to the equipment, especially the seals.

The evolution of the...