News / Application Stories / Midlands Brewery Blows Away Energy Losses
Midlands Brewery Blows Away Energy Losses
When it comes to the energy-efficient supply of oil-free, low pressure air for critical process operations, industry in general – and the brewing industry in particular– looks no further than Atlas Copco’s Z-range of positive displacement blower units and centrifugal blowers.
Colin Walton, Senior Engineer at Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, would readily agree that is the case at his Banks’s brewery plant, part of the Park Brewery in Wolverhampton. And it’s the answer that many other process industry operators are also discovering when the task in hand is round-the-clock, pneumatic conveying of powders and granulates.
Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries PLC is the UK's leading independent brewing and pub retailing business. It is one of the top 300 quoted companies in the UK and operates three breweries - Park Brewery in Wolverhampton (brewing Banks's, Hanson's and Mansfield beers), Marston's Brewery at Burton-on-Trent, and Jennings Brewery at Cockermouth in the Lake District.
In addition to brewing, W&DB also packages beers and lagers in kegs, cans and bottles and sells a full range of wines, spirits and minerals to an extensive collection of Free Trade and National Account customers. And that’s not to mention the 2,276 total pub estate - 1,748 tenancies within The Union Pub Company and 528 under Pathfinder Pubs direct management.
So an organisation of this size is a force to be reckoned with. Little wonder then that the company prides itself on the consistently excellent quality of beers brewed in the traditional way, using the very best quality natural ingredients. These ingredients include the milled, malted barley grain that is ‘mashed’ to provide the fermentable sugary wort from which the beers and ales are produced.
It was the pneumatic conveying of what is left over in the mash tuns after the wort is run off – the spent grains, sold for cattle feed – that was the subject of an AirScan audit investigation by Atlas Copco authorised distributor, AQ Central. Its aim was to overcome blockages, improve flow rates and provide energy savings for the W&DB’s ‘Pneumaveyor’ system that delivered the spent grains to a storage silo, prior to transportation.
Initially, the air supply for this process relied on 7bar plant air from existing compressors utilising a control unit to limit the conveyor air to below 1bar, via a receiver, otherwise the grains would not flow satisfactorily. But this was a highly uneconomic procedure in terms of energy efficiency. The solution in terms of sizing, both of flow and pressure, determined from the AirScan survey, suggested increased diameter pipework and the installation of a dedicated Atlas Copco Z L1400 blower.
According to Colin Walton: “The new system has overcome blockage problems experienced in the past and with an oil–free operation there is no risk of product contamination. But, better still, we are now making substantial energy savings – as much as 75%. That makes a major contribution to our bottom line.”
The ZL1400 low noise, low vibration, low pulsation, positive displacement rotary blower is designed with trusted technology to deliver reliable quality air 24 hours a day. Its tri-lobe blower element concept, whereby two precisely balanced tri-lobe rotors turn inside an oval casing, featuring milled pre-filling channels, offers superior energy efficiency and a significantly smoother, pulsation–free flow than traditional two-lobe rotor elements. What’s more, the separation of the element and the oil system, via labyrinth seals, guarantees 100% oil-free air delivery.
An additional advantage of this low maintenance design is that the sound waves produced by the pre-filling channels cancel out most of the blower noise, resulting in an overall reduction in noise level.
The ZL 1400 blower delivers an almost constant flow rate, proportional to the operating speed, independent of the discharge pressure conditions. The full ZL range consists of 17 sizes for intake volumes of 25 up to almost 8300m3/h, at overpressures of up to 1000 mbar, depending on the blower size. In addition to duties such as W&DB’s spent grain conveying, Atlas Copco’s ZL blowers are eminently suited for other process industry operations such liquid homogenising, water treatment aeration and filter flushing, furnace air supply, yarn drying and process air for chemical plants.
