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US 2015/0177093 A1Published application
Multistage container leak testing
AssigneeWilco AG
InventorMartin Lehmann
Life of this patent
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AssigneeWilco AG
InventorMartin Lehmann
Estimating the term…
A coarse-fine two-stage leak detection is carried out on sealed, filled containers loaded into container holders or “pucks”. Failure of the first, coarse leak detection stage, e.g. a pressure-course or impedance or laser-absorption based leak detection stage, causes containers to be rejected together with their corresponding container holders. These are then separated, and the container holder is cleaned and dried before being returned to the system. Any leaking product from inside a grossly leaking container is thus retained within the container holder, thus reducing contamination of subsequent containers and their container holders, preventing such contamination from reaching the fine leak detection stage, e.g. a mass-spectrometer-based leak detection stage.
Method of leak testing closed, filled containers comprising the steps of:
Method according to the preceding claim, further comprising the step of:
Method according to any preceding claim, further comprising the steps of:
Method according to the preceding claim, wherein the cleaned container holders are reused.
Method according to any preceding claim, further comprising the step of retaining within the said container holder any product escaping from a container during the first detection step.
Method according to any proceeding claim, wherein each container holder is adapted to receive a single container.
Method according to any preceding claim, wherein each container holder is adapted to receive a plurality of containers, a plurality of containers are loaded into each container holder and simultaneously undergo each respective leak detection step.
Method according to any preceding claim, wherein the first leak detection step is a pressure-course-based or impedance-based or laser-absorption-based leak detection step, and the second leak detection step is a mass-spectrometry-based leak detection step.
Apparatus for leak testing closed and filled containers comprising:
Apparatus according to the preceding claim, further comprising a second rejection mechanism operated based on an output of the second leak testing arrangement and arranged to reject container holders containing a container determined as leaky by the second leak testing arrangement.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.