Innovative pilot brewery automation technology for Weihenstephan – Cooperation with ATN GmbH
Background
The pilot brewery of Weihenstephan’s research centre for brewery and food quality is at the forefront of modernisation and innovation. The pilot brewery uses automated flowmeters, process control valves, solenoid valves, pneumatic actuators and “smart” valve islands making manual adjustments obsolete. This not only saves time but also enables monitoring of the recipes developed or tested here possible at any time. The control system is kept so simple that the master brewer can create, operate and modify recipes from a PC using an Excel spreadsheet.
With ATN GmbH, the small brewery picked a competent partner that has developed multibrauplus®, an automation solution specifically tailored to small and medium-sized breweries. Based on a Simatic S7 from Siemens and graphical visualisation, all the functions – from malt storage bins to fermentation cellar – can be automated.
Challenge
Weihenstephan research centre explains: “Our pilot brewery has an output of 50 litres of wort and a capacity of nine fermentation tanks capable of holding 60 litres each. Beyond that, the brewhouse and the lautering process of the “mini brewery” are no different from those of a larger facility. Until now, most things were adjusted manually.” This applied to the control valves in the water intake for mashing and sparging to the control valves for the lautered wort and to the pump used to drain the wort tank or to adjust the height of the rake arms. “There wasn’t even any scaling here and the rake motor always ran at the same speed,” explained the Weihenstephan research centre.
To achieve a better basis for future research work, those responsible at the research centre decided it was time to remodel the plant automation. However, the decision-makers felt it was important to be able to intercede in the system at any time, even after its modernisation.
Solution
The whole pneumatic system is controlled by a valve island. This is directly installed and shipped in a stainless steel, hygienically designed control cabinet with the stainless steel control AirLINE Quick base plate to save space.
“The stainless steel control cabinet is well suited to our small pilot brewery. All of the valves also have a P-channel shut-off mechanism, which means they can be switched out even while the machine is in operation without shutting it down.”
Weihenstephan research centre concludes
Result
For the pilot brewery, the investment in cutting-edge automation technology has been a worthwhile process. A high degree of reproducibility and traceability is possible with this solution, as data acquisition is integrated into the control system. Product-specific information can be displayed graphically along with other measured values. Thanks to the fruitful partnership, the system was prepared for start-up quickly and easily. “The training time was also short because all those responsible quickly got used to the Excel spreadsheet system,” concludes the research centre.
