A GREENER BREWERY FOR GREENE KING

A centuries-old brewery has significantly reduced its carbon emissions with the help of Lorien Engineering Solutions, the Midlands based design engineering and project management company.

Greene King, which has been brewing beer in Bury St Edmunds since 1799, worked closely with brewing and process engineering experts at Lorien to reduce energy consumption at its Westgate Brewery in Suffolk.

The company is the UK’s leading brewer of cask ale with brands including Greene King IPA, Old Speckled Hen, Abbot Ale and Scotland’s leading ale brand, Belhaven Best.

The six-month turnkey project was preceded by a pre-engineering design study investigating the variability of evaporation rates in the wort boiling system. This is the most energy intensive part of the brewing process where a copper acts like a giant kettle and boils the wort for around an hour before the cooled solution is transferred to a fermenting vessel.

The Lorien team then recommended and implemented various modifications to the steam and condensate systems including new pipe work, steam mass flow meters, steam control valves, steam traps and steam isolation valves. Expansion of the electrical and pneumatic systems included a new remote input/output control panel and a new pneumatic solenoid valve panel.

Finally, new software was created for control and supervision of the system. A Functional Design Specification (FDS) was developed detailing the design, and the software was thoroughly trialled during Customer Acceptance Testing (CAT) to ensure smooth commissioning.

Lorien’s project manager Martin Hobbs said: “The project has made an immediate and significant improvement in the accuracy and control of the copper boiling system’s evaporation rates. This has allowed Greene King to accurately target and achieve the rates they need, reducing steam consumption and consequently carbon emissions too.

Telephone: 01543 444244

www.lorienengineering.com