How Does Nitrogen Help Preserve Bottles Of Wine?

Wine-making is a centuries-old process that has evolved with modern innovations to improve the quality of the wine. Wine is sensitive to bacterial contamination, which can negatively impact the wine’s color, flavor, and quality. Chemical oxidation can take a similar toll on wine.

Nitrogen gas can help preserve wine by protecting it from oxidation. Whether you’re a winemaker or simply interested in how exposure to oxygen can affect wine, here’s what you need to know about using nitrogen as a wine preserver.

How a Wine Nitrogen Injector Can Improve Wine Quality

Nitrogen gas is a colorless, odorless gas that does not impact wine’s color or flavor. While nitrogen isn’t involved in traditional wine-making, it is used in modern industrial wine distilleries. It can be used for sparging, flushing, and blanketing wine.

Flushing

During the wine-making process, wine is moved through a series of vats and hoses from one fermentation stage to another. The more the wine is moved, the more oxygen it is exposed to. To prevent this exposure, the vats and hoses are flushed with nitrogen gas to eliminate oxygen and minimize the wine’s exposure.

Blanketing

The wine bottles are filled with nitrogen gas before and after being filled with wine. This displaces the oxygen.

Sparging

Wine can absorb oxygen through the various stages of fermentation. Just as oxygen impacts wine in the hoses and vats, it can also impact wine when absorbed directly into the liquid. To prevent this from happening, the wine is sparged with nitrogen gas, which means that nitrogen is bubbled through the wine to help the wine release oxygen.

When sparging with white wine, combining carbon dioxide and nitrogen is best. When sparging red wine, it’s acceptable to sparge with nitrogen alone.

Either way, sparging with nitrogen is a cost-effective and efficient way to prevent oxidation. Nitrogen has many benefits, including its low cost and its easy availability. Using a nitrogen generator for wine is one way to sparge wine inexpensively, as nitrogen generators produce a limitless and inexpensive nitrogen source.

How to Get Nitrogen Gas for Wine Production

Wine producers can get nitrogen from portable cylinders and nitrogen generators. Portable cylinders seem a natural choice because they have no high up-front costs. However, for any business with an ongoing need for nitrogen, cylinders have a variety of disadvantages.

Namely, nitrogen cylinders represent an ongoing cost that can add up over time. In addition, cylinders can take up a lot of space in a warehouse and, at times, may take up more space than at other times. Finding space for nitrogen cylinders can be a challenge. In addition, nitrogen cylinders can experience supply chain problems. At times, finding enough cylinders to continue production can be a challenge.

The alternative to nitrogen cylinders is a nitrogen generator. Nitrogen generators are preferable for businesses with an ongoing need for nitrogen. Compared to cylinders, nitrogen generators represent a higher upfront cost, but a lower one spread out over time. Once the purchase has been made, running and maintaining a generator costs relatively low.

In addition, generators can produce limitless and reliable amounts of nitrogen. Generators often take up less space than cylinders and never encounter the same supply chain problems that cylinders experience. Nitrogen generators are even more eco-friendly than cylinders because cylinders rely on fossil fuel-burning vehicles for transportation.

Need a Nitrogen Generator? On Site Gas Can Help

On Site Gas produces durable nitrogen generators. For more information about obtaining a nitrogen generator for your industrial wine facility, contact On Site Gas for a quote. We offer reputable gas generators for food and beverage preservation businesses, healthcare settings, and more.

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Nitrogen Food Packaging: How Nitrogen Flushing Keeps Your Food Fresh

Packaged foods sold in grocery stores and convenience stores are specially packaged to keep the food fresh for a long time. Nitrogen is a crucial part of that packaging process. Whether you’re thinking about starting a business in the food industry or you’ve just always wondered how processed foods can stay safe to eat for so long, this information about nitrogen food packaging can help.

What Happens to Food Exposed to Oxygen

Oxygen causes food to deteriorate, so long-term food preservation starts with removing the oxygen from the container. Oxygen causes fats to go rancid, colors to change, and food products to spoil. There are two ways to remove oxygen from a container: Vacuum packaging the container or flushing the air out.

Vacuum Packaging Doesn’t Work For All Types of Food

Vacuum packaging is one way to remove oxygen, but this type of packaging is only safe to use for certain types of food. Beef jerky is an example of a food type that does well with vacuum packaging. During the vacuum packaging process, food is placed in a plastic sheath, and all the air is removed. Fragile foods break under these conditions, so only sturdy food items, like beef jerky and coffee beans, are appropriate food for this type of packaging.

Nitrogen Flushing Replaces Oxygen in Food Packaging

Nitrogen flushing is an excellent option for fragile foods like chips, snack foods, and crackers. During the nitrogen flushing process, nitrogen replaces oxygen inside the package. The nitrogen gas fills the package and creates a cushion, preventing the food from spoiling. Food doesn’t react with nitrogen the way it does with oxygen, so nitrogen in place of oxygen helps keep the food fresh.

The gas also prevents the sides of the bag from being crushed around the food to help keep the food intact. Nitrogen gas is harmless to people; when the bag is opened, the nitrogen escapes into the air. Since nitrogen makes up nearly 80% of the air we breathe, it’s considered safe.

How Nitrogen Packaging Food Works

Food is placed inside a package prior to flushing the package with nitrogen. A nitrogen food packaging machine forces oxygen out of the bag and then immediately replaces the oxygen with nitrogen. Once the space inside the bag has been filled with nitrogen, the bag is then sealed.

Once the bag opens, the food begins to deteriorate because it’s once again exposed to oxygen. The deterioration of the food can be slowed by clipping the bag shut and limiting the oxygen inside, but once the bag has been opened, the spoilage of the food becomes inevitable.

Are You Packaging Food? Why A Nitrogen Generator is Important

Nitrogen tanks are a common tool that food packaging facilities use to package their food. Unfortunately, nitrogen tanks are inefficient for a variety of reasons.

Problems with nitrogen tanks include:

  • Storage space. Nitrogen tanks take up a lot of room and need to be stored until they’re returned to the distributor.
  • Cost. While nitrogen tanks may seem like they don’t cost very much, they represent an ongoing cost to the business. If your business rents nitrogen tanks regularly, the costs for these tanks can add up.
  • Supply chain issues. Nitrogen tanks are susceptible to supply chain problems that can cause delays. If your supplier of nitrogen tanks is for any reason experiencing a supply problem, then your business could be at risk.
  • Environmental problems. Nitrogen delivery requires a truck to arrive at your facility on an ongoing basis, burning fossil fuels to keep your business going.

Purchasing a nitrogen generator for food packaging can solve all of these problems. A nitrogen generator is an efficient tool for producing a steady stream of nitrogen on site. Nitrogen generators are better for the environment because they’re energy efficient. They’re also cost-efficient. While a nitrogen generator does involve some upfront costs, once the generator has been purchased, the only other associated costs are the energy to keep the generator going and maintenance.

Need a Nitrogen Generator? Contact On Site Gas

On Site Gas Systems manufactures and supports nitrogen generators for businesses in the food packaging industry and a variety of other industries. To find out more about how a nitrogen generator can benefit your business or to get a quote for a nitrogen generator, contact us today.

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On-Site Nitrogen Generators: 5 Reasons To Make The Switch From N2 Bottles This Year

If your business relies on nitrogen for its manufacturing process, there are many reasons to switch from nitrogen tanks to an on-site nitrogen generator. Switching to an on-site nitrogen generation system can save your business money and keep your business running smoothly day in and day out. Once you know all the benefits of having a nitrogen generator for your business, you may be ready to make the switch. When this happens, On Site Gas can help. Here’s what you need to know about switching from N2 bottles to an on-site nitrogen gas generator.

1. It’s Cost-Efficient

Delivery of nitrogen can be costly. Tank rentals, delivery charges, administrative costs, and other fees can add up quickly when you’re paying for nitrogen gas delivery. What’s worse is that nitrogen is always lost during the delivery process. Your business paid for the nitrogen, but it never made it on site.

On-site nitrogen gas generation may cost more in the beginning, but this one-time cost could turn out to be far less than the ongoing cost of nitrogen tank rental. How much do you spend on nitrogen every month? How much does this amount to per year? Compare this to the price of a nitrogen generator to find out how quickly you would begin to save money if you purchased a nitrogen generator. For a free quote on the cost of a nitrogen generator, contact On Site Gas.

2. Increases Safety

Nitrogen tanks are stored at low temperatures or incredibly high pressure. Either way, this can make handling nitrogen tanks dangerous, and accidents on site can lead to injuries or worse.

OSHA standards dictate how to handle nitrogen as a compressed gas and as a liquid, however, handling nitrogen from a nitrogen generator simplifies everything. Nitrogen produced on demand from a generator is safer to handle overall and can lead to fewer on site accidents.

3. Reduces Downtime and Supply Issues

Nitrogen gas that arrives from a regular delivery of tanks or cylinders is inherently subject to delays and supply chain problems. As long as your business is relying on another business to deliver nitrogen to your site, you are at risk of a variety of problems including shortages, closings, and any other delivery-related problems.

Everything from weather to strikes can impact your delivery of nitrogen, depending on the circumstances. If your business relies on nitrogen delivery as an essential part of its operations, then you could be at risk. With an on-site nitrogen generator, your business will have an on-demand product, available at any time, as needed. This can help ensure your business operations are kept running smoothly.

4. Environmentally Friendly

It takes a great deal of energy to turn nitrogen gas into a liquid, and even more to turn the liquid back into a gas. All this energy use is bad for the environment. But what’s better for the environment is to produce nitrogen on demand from a generator.

Nitrogen generators use comparatively less energy just to run, and of course, do not use natural resources for regular delivery in the way that nitrogen tanks do. In other words, nitrogen tank delivery requires a delivery vehicle to arrive at your facility. The delivery vehicle releases pollution into the air, and also requires the use of fossil fuels to power the delivery vehicle.

Using a nitrogen generator is an excellent way to use fewer natural resources to run your business. Nitrogen generators are a greener, more eco-friendly solution.

5. Fits Specific Needs

Nitrogen generators are able to switch their purity levels for the application at hand, while tanks are not able to provide this service. Having a nitrogen generator on hand to fit the specific needs of the user is much more practical than keeping nitrogen tanks on hand for each task.

Interested in Installing a Nitrogen Generator? Contact OnSite Gas

On Site Gas creates nitrogen generators for businesses around the world, including membrane nitrogen generators and PSA nitrogen generators. We also custom-build generators for customers who have specific, hard-to-meet needs. To learn more about how a nitrogen generator can benefit your business, or to get a quote for your nitrogen generator system, request one today from On Site Gas.

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