What is Clean-in-place (CIP)?
Clean-in-place (CIP) is the automated cleaning of tanks, pipework, heat exchangers and fillers without dismantling them, by circulating rinse water, caustic, acid and sanitizer through each closed circuit.
Where CIP runs and who owns it
Dairies, breweries, juice and beverage lines, sauce plants and pharmaceutical sites run CIP on silos, tankers, pasteurizers, separators and fillers, often after every product changeover. The quality team owns the validated recipe, while the utilities team pays for the water, steam and chemicals each run consumes, and the two rarely work from a shared record.
What a cycle is made of
A typical recipe runs a pre-rinse, a hot caustic wash, an intermediate rinse, an acid wash, a final rinse and, where specified, a sanitizer. Each step is defined by temperature, chemical concentration, flow velocity and contact time. Those values come from the plant's own validation and equipment supplier rather than from a single regulation, so there is no universal liters-per-cycle target. Overlong rinses, failed rinse recovery and passing valves add volume per cycle long before they affect hygiene results.
What Aqueduct measures on a CIP circuit
aQ WaterGuard meters supply and return on each circuit, so every cycle gets a volume that can be ranked against that circuit's own history and against the product run before it. On the water digital twin, CIP is a named line in the water balance instead of disappearing into unaccounted loss. aQ EnergySmart adds the steam or hot water used for the caustic step. Recipe validation stays with the quality team.