Brewery Batch and Mixing Flow Control

Achieve significant efficiency improvements and cost-effective flow control with the effective use of magnetic flowmeters and ensure the addition of the proper amounts of ingredients in every batch run to maintain desired beverage qualities.

 

Application

A historic brewery in the United States originally built in the 1800s had been closed for 20 years when it reopened recently as a contract brewery for hard lemonade and other batch brews. Since, today, demand for these beverage varieties has grown, the brewery has come back to life and is dedicated to expanding production.

Tooled for beverage canning, the facility had relied successfully for years on process control that included flow-control devices and a supervisory control system composed of programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

Quality and consistency remain critical to the brewery, as it does across the industry. Each canned beverage must taste the same as all the others. To ensure the batch process maintains the desired beverage qualities, volumetric flow meters must help ensure the addition of the proper amounts of ingredients in every batch run. To that end, the brewery expansion team recognized the need to investigate the effective use of magnetic flowmeters for significant efficiency improvements. 

Challenges

The team faced many challenges as they considered how to expand production in the historic building. After analysis and discussion, the brewers recognized that correcting inefficiencies in out-of-date technology would help them achieve the increased and consistent throughput they needed. 

A contributor to the inefficiency was the prevalence of flowmeters that, due to a constrained communication protocol, could not share information with the supervisory control system or control-room personnel. The protocol in use at the brewery was not sufficiently versatile to provide operators with device status and health information simultaneously as production continued. Under these conditions, if the supervisory control system indicated a problem, the operator would need to ask a technician to visit the production floor and assess the situation using a handheld communicator. 

Solution

Since the customer worked with Yokogawa previously in other facilities, they were familiar with the robustness, accuracy, and reliability of the devices. With that in mind, the brewery chose Yokogawa’s ADMAG Total Insight (TI) AXG®, an electromagnetic flow meter with EtherNet/IP communication. 

In Yokogawa’s solution, the ADMAG TI flow meter communicates multiple parameters via EtherNet/IP to the supervisory control system. The total insight provided by the magnetic flow meter enables operators in the control room to view information such as device health and other diagnostics, flow rate, and slurry conditions simultaneously while the operation continues. Operators can more easily perform maintenance activities, set up devices in the field, and troubleshoot without leaving their desks or stopping production. 

The ADMAG TI flow meter further enables the brewery to improve efficiency and expand more quickly by providing faster set up of new devices through the seamless integration of electronic data sheet (EDS) files and through easy input of device data to the supervisory control system. These capabilities enable the brewery team to more quickly configure new flow lines. Installation and startup are further simplified because configuration and diagnoses are performed and modified using a web browser and supervisory control system interface. 

During general operation, the ADMAG TI AXG offers increased throughput and higher accuracy, which are made possible through Yokogawa’s patented dual-frequency excitation method. This innovation combines traditional AC and DC excitation flow-meter methods to provide the brewery process with stability, slurry noise immunity, fast response, lower power consumption, and accuracy—all contributors to quicker expansion and improved throughput.

Key Advantages

• Return on investment is quickly realized thanks to magnetic flow meters communicating device status and a variety of diagnostic functions simultaneously to the supervisory control system.
• Cost savings on installation are gained through quick response and delivery from a local manufacturing facility in the USA.
• Fast and consistent product throughput via patented dual-frequency excitation with stability, slurry noise immunity, fast response, lower power consumption, and accuracy.