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Soon New Belgium will have an own solar plant

In times when all the fields of international industry are geared to reduce costs and harmful emissions to the environment, production brewing is following the trend too (or fashion, maybe?). Between innovative research and political courage of some challenging pioneers, gradually even the beer industry is embracing the next revolution of the world: sustainable growth, limited environmental impact, efficiency and waste reduction. In America, the achievements of some microbreweries are already quite substantial.

Last week, for example, Beernews.org informed us that the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. has been recognized “Friend of glass” by the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI) for its achievements “in making significant and innovative efforts to promote or participate in glass container recycling for bottle-to-bottle use”. The recognition was somewhat expected: the brewery since its opening in California spent a great deal of effort to integrate environmental principles into decision-making structures and business.

Even more futuristic is the turn of the New Belgium Brewery, which last summer announced the starting of its solar panel installation. The installation will have a capacity of 200 kw, producing 16% of the maximum electric load of the company and 3% of the total consumption of electricity. The intervention is part of a larger project involving eight other companies in the area of Fort Collins, Colorado.

It’s worth mentioning that the solar plant decision is not born by chance. In 1998, New Belgium became the first wind powered brewery, wich currently produce up to 15% of its energy through a natural gas processing plant. The photovoltaic system will cost more than a million dollars and will be funded 40% by the Department of Energy.

But let’s move in Europe: speaking of pure research, in September news were published about a team of engineers from the Technische Universität München who developed a method to save at least 20% of energy used in brewing. The project focused especially on the process of boiling of the malt, which requires at least 45% of the entire production process. I also learned that brewing is one of the most energy consuming process in all the beverage industry, wich I did not know…

Here’s how the engeneers explain how this could be possible:

One approach was to use combined heat and power (CHP) stations, which are highly energy efficient and environmentally friendly due their cogeneration of power and heat. This technology, however, has proven to be unsuitable for breweries: CHP stations do indeed generate heat in addition to power, but only achieve temperatures up 90 degrees centigrade. Boiling down wort requires at least 110 degrees centigrade. To remedy this deficit, engineers from the Institute for Resource and Energy Technology at the TU München have been following a hot trail since August 2008: they have combined the CHP station with a so-called “zeolite storage system.”

Such storage systems work thermo-chemically with zeolite spheres 2-3 mm in diameter. These porous pellets are made of silicate minerals and have excellent heat storage properties. One gram of zeolite has an internal surface of about 500 square meters. The pores absorb water to full saturation. When zeolite is heated, the spheres dry up – the storage system is charged. Once water is added again, the zeolite spheres release heat of up to 250 degrees centigrade. The brewing engineers at the TUM want to take advantage of this thermo-chemical principle to add on the missing 20 degrees to the 90 degrees centigrade from the CHP station of the brewery.

Through this mechanism, you can store the energy produced by cogeneration when consumption of beer is reduced (during the night) and then reuse it in periods of peak demand, i.e. during the process of boiling.