Wednesday 1 February 2012

Energy recovery project (ERP)


One of this year's bigger projects is re-engineering the brew-house to incorporate an energy recovery & re-use system. By condensing all the steam coming off the copper, and using that recovered heat to pre-heat the wort in the following brew, we can substantially reduce our energy consumption. In order to minimise losses brewing will continue uninterrupted until the week's production is complete. I haven't persuaded the team that this is a good idea yet, but I will.

Whilst this concept is not unusual in larger breweries (in fact I'm visiting one later this week to see what I can learn) it is largely unheard of at our scale. I have no idea why, but I suspect I might be finding out. Follow my comedic progress here in your sour away brewblog.

7 comments:

Tatton Brewery said...

Have considered similar myself. Strikes me biggest risk, aside from condensate routing, is interfering in evaporative loss - have you given this thought?

dredpenguin said...

Love the idea of this Eddie. It may be a mission to set up but I'm sure if you can get it working it will save on running costs.

What do you think your Pay Off Time is?

Gadds Beers Hop said...

Tatton - indeed, as steam condenses it shrinks 1000 times so I'm thinking I might even get better evaporation. Condensate can run to drain, no COD or BOD and a neutral pH.

Penguin - no idea yet on the payback as I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm not expecting the set-up costs to run too high: heat exchangers are relatively cheap. I do need a tall, thin tank but second hand ought to suffice.

Tatton Brewery said...

Looking at flow into & out of Heat Storage Tank (HST) : Does it not make sense to have high-temp entry point at bottom & low-temp entry at top to encourage convective mixing?

Eddie said...

Tatton: the idea is specifically to avoid mixing - we want the cooler stuff at the bottom for condensing the steam & the hotter stuff at the top for pre-heating the wort.

Tatton Brewery said...

Hence the proportions of the HST. Would love to discuss this with you Eddie - will you be at SIBA conference? Plug me in to your dance card.

sap testing said...

I was looking for the term ERP i.e. Enterprise Resource Planning when I came accross your blog of Energy recovery project (ERP).As I read the idea I really appreciate the effort.Its a valuable project and I wish you luck for the same.You are doing a great job.