What it does
The ENOS A100 sniffs each returned bottle without ever touching it: a sample of the air inside the bottle is drawn out and checked by up to four detectors at once, each one tuned to a different kind of contaminant. If a detector finds a contaminant above a safe limit, the bottle is pulled from the line. Often several detectors must agree before a bottle is rejected — which keeps good bottles from being thrown out by mistake. Because nothing touches the bottle, there is no risk of one bottle contaminating the next, and none of the inconsistency of people sniffing bottles by hand.
In the line
The ENOS A100 sits before the washer. Just before each bottle reaches it, a pretreatment step (ENOS SyncroJET) adds a small dose of sodium carbonate and water to the bottom of the bottle and stirs up any residue, so its vapours rise to where the sniffer can detect them; a rinse, an air blow-off and detectors for leftover liquid or a still-capped bottle keep unsuitable bottles out. After the analysis, a camera checks the bottle bottom for foam. When a bottle is rejected, an alarm and a red light alert the operator and the bottle is removed gently by the reject unit.
What each detector catches
- Aromatics
- Aromatic hydrocarbons such as gasoline, benzene, paint solvents and distillates.
- Ammoniacal
- Ammonia and nitrogen-based compounds, including some pesticides and fertilizers.
- Hydrocarbons
- Cancels out false alarms from smoke — forklift exhaust or chimney smoke that storage can leave inside a bottle — so genuine contamination stands out clearly.
- Low-volatility
- Perfumed, foam-making products such as scented cleaners and detergents, revealed by the foam they raise during pretreatment.
Residues that give off almost no vapour on their own
Heavy residues — used motor oil, cooking oil, greases, industrial silicones — barely evaporate at room temperature, so a bottle can sit quietly at the bottom of the line giving off almost nothing to sample. This is exactly what the ENOS SyncroJET pretreatment step exists for. A dose of sodium carbonate and water goes into the bottom of the bottle and agitates whatever is sitting there, lifting the residue off the wall and driving its vapours up into the headspace where the detectors work. The ENOS A100 does not wait for a contaminant to evaporate on its own; the line makes it evaporate first. Surfactants and perfumed products give themselves away a second way, through the foam the same pretreatment raises, which the Vision module reads at the bottle bottom.
Options
- Vision ENOS Vision module that captures an image of the bottle bottom for a 100% inspection zone, catching foam raised during pretreatment that signals perfumed, foam-generating contaminants.
- Autocal Auto-calibration mode: the system calibrates and self-diagnoses every 2 hours, verifying its own state and storing the results for stable detection across shifts.
ENOS A100 and ENOS W-10
The ENOS A100 is the sniffer for returnable PET bottles of 1.0 to 3.0 L. The same vapor trace detection applied to large returnable water bottles — the 3, 5 and 6 gallon water-cooler bottles — is the ENOS W-10. Same principle, same contaminant families, sized and timed for a very different container. A plant running both a soft-drink line and a water line uses the ENOS A100 on one and the ENOS W-10 on the other.
