Separators for clarification are used in many stages in the brewing process. Separation of trub from wort, recovering yeast and beer after fermentation, or pre-clarifying beer before filtration are the key locations.
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Modern breweries use inline photometers controlling the separation process in order to maximize efficiency, throughput capacity, to increase product quality and at the same time to reduce costs.
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Separator Control in Breweries Benefits |
- Maximize efficiency
- Maximize throughput capacity and yield
- Prevent shutdowns
- Optimize bypass blending control
- Ensure product quality
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| Outlet (Centrate) Control |
Centrifugal separators equipped with a NIR absorption based photometer AF16-N or AS16-N on the outlet, can eliminate needless discharges and initiate them only when solids (yeast) carry-over is detected in the centrate stream. Counting the frequency of the discharges is an indicator of incoming solids loads, which can then be used to adjust the flow rate to allow maximum separation performance in high load conditions, and allows maximum throughput at low load conditions. Optionally, a scattered light sensor TF16-N can be installed instead of a NIR absorption sensor to ensure lowest measuring ranges, this obviously depends on your application.
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| Feed Control |
Even better, adding a second NIR absorption based photometer AF16-N or AS16-N to the feed line, and measuring incoming loads directly, allows immediate response to varying process conditions, including diverting high solids slugs to prevent plugging up a separator bowl. One mishap like this would cost more than the analyzers used to prevent it. Of course proper beer/yeast interface detection upstream will also prevent unacceptably high solids loads from shutting down a separator. In some breweries, clarified streams are bright enough for release. In this case a scattered light sensor TF16-N would be used for turbidity QA as well as for separator control.
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| Bypass Blend Control |
In some cases a scattered light sensor TF16-N instead of a NIR absorption based photometer AF16-N or AS16-N can be useful for yeast concentration control. A bypass line is used to dose a certain amount of unfiltered beer or yeast back into the clarified process stream. With this instrumentation constant beer quality can be ensured. Control the turbidity inline without the need for sample taking and manual dosing and save time and money.
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| Concentrate Control |
The concentrate stream of a separator can be equipped with a NIR absorption based photometer AS16-N or AF16-N using a very short optical path length to accurately correlate absorption measurements directly to weightpercent. This enables yield measurement and control of product quality.
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