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