Poppels Brewery replaced acid disinfection with ozone
Introduction.
Poppels Brewery, one of the fastest-growing craft breweries in Sweden, has already established a green eco-friendly profile. Now they have taken a significant leap towards lowering their environmental impact even further by implementing ozone technology in their daily operations.
The brewery resides in Partille, Sweden, in top-modern facilities to make room for the expanding demand for their beers across the country. The brewery produces many popular beers such as Russian Imperial Stout and Belgian Wit. The team of brewers needed a more sustainable alternative to their chemical consumption and handling. Ozone was chosen to replace the current sanitation agent.
The problem.
A rapidly increasing production means higher consumables costs as well as handling and storage of chemicals. The brewery staff needed to manage the use of peracetic acid that was routinely applied to disinfect the fermentation tanks and filling machines after each production cycle. Peracetic acid is a common sanitation agent, but it requires careful handling and thorough rinsing in process equipment to ensure by-product free beer.
The solution.
As a joint project with Mellifiq, an Ozonetech high-performance ozone solution was implemented in the existing Clean-in-Place system. Ozone is produced in a safe manner only on demand and replaced thereby the previous use of acid. Aqueous ozone now circulates in the system following caustic cleaning of the process equipment.
The Ozonetech RENA Vivo A-series is installed in a side-stream connected to the main CIP system.
Ozone use for process equipment sanitation requires a high-performance, oxygen fed, and water cooled ozone system with an integrated gas-liquid ozone transfer mechanism.
Evaluation.
After ozone sanitation of the fermentation tanks and filling machine, the disinfection results are validated using ATP analysis. The Ozonetech RENA Vivo system delivers results according to the high standards Poppels demand. The brewers now have an acid-free working environment.