Heat exchangers expand ginger beer production

When Bundaberg Brewed Drinks outgrew its production facility, the company ensured the equipment in its new Master Brewery maintained product quality and ran smoothly by installing a new cooker and thermaliser from HRS Heat Exchangers.

Established by the Fleming family in Bundaberg, Queensland in 1968, Bundaberg Brewed Drinks grew as demand for its premium, non-alcoholic, craft-brewed soft drinks expanded. Evolving from a local supplier to an international brewed beverage manufacturer, the brand’s Bundaberg Ginger Beer has become recognisable on an international scale, with its distinctive glass stubby bottle and rip cap lid.

This continued increased demand meant that the company’s previous manufacturing facility was no longer large enough, and so it invested in a new greenfield project that would provide the necessary space to accommodate future growth.

As the ginger beer brewing process includes several key stages — including grinding the dried ginger root, making the wort, fermenting with yeast, maturing and then mixing into the final recipe, before being filtered and bottled — the ingredients or product needs to be heated or cooled at different stages and HRS was chosen to provide the necessary heat exchangers to provide hot water, clean-in-place (CIP) solutions, and product heating and cooling throughout the brewery.

The HRS cooker and thermaliser are an integral part of Bundaberg’s ginger beer fermentation process.

The HRS cooker and thermaliser are said to be an integral part of Bundaberg’s ginger beer fermentation process, heating and cooling the wort as required. Both turnkey systems were supplied on process skids to facilitate installation and maintenance and are based around the proven HRS MI and MR Series of corrugated tube heat exchangers.

The cooker system, which is designed to process up to 18.6 tonnes of product each hour, uses steam to raise the product temperature above 100°C. This is achieved in two stages using an HRS MR Series heat exchanger with direct heat recovery reusing the heat removed when the product is cooled after cooking. A final cooling stage using an HRS MI Series heat exchanger lowers the product temperature further, to ambient conditions.

Thermalisation is a lower temperature alternative to pasteurisation, and the thermaliser supplied at Bundaberg Brewed Drinks uses two types of heat exchanger in different processes to provide sufficient capacity to treat 25.5 tonnes of product every hour. The skid-mounted solution uses both MI and MR Series heat exchangers to raise the product to the required temperatures using both hot water, and energy recovered from the subsequent cooling process. The cooling process, which also uses both MI and MR Series heat exchangers, returns the product to ambient temperature once thermalised.

Ella Taghavi, Sales Engineering Manager at HRS Heat Exchangers, commented, “We were originally asked to quote solely for the supply of standalone heat exchangers. However, we quickly realised that an integrated solution-based system mounted on a skid would provide Bundaberg with numerous efficiency benefits.

“Key considerations for this project were our ability to provide the required thermal performance in an efficient package, in a solution which could be delivered within the required timescale and budget. Much of our ability to provide such a solution is down to our corrugated tube design which increases heat transfer efficiency while reducing the size of the necessary heat transfer surface, allowing us to provide compact and efficient systems.”

HRS MI and MR Series both utilise the HRS Heat Exchangers’ corrugated tube design, which maximises heat transfer and energy efficiency, while also reducing fouling.

Delivery of the new production equipment was entrusted to long-term Bundaberg collaborator M. E. Engineering, an established process engineering company and systems integrator with particular experience in the food and beverage and distilling sectors.

As is common with such projects, the final design was the result of consultation between all three parties involved in the project, and once designed, the two systems were delivered in around 10 weeks. Commissioning was then carried out once the wider project, overseen by M. E. Engineering, was complete.

Matt Brain, Project Manager at Bundaberg Brewed Drinks, added, “One of our key considerations is ensuring the consistency of our product. That means making sure the heating and cooling processes are reliably uniform, so that our ginger beer has the same familiar taste in every batch.

“One of the things we found when working with HRS was that they were able to extend the scope of their original brief in order to provide more options for us. Once the equipment was delivered, the installation and commissioning process went smoothly and since they have been operational, all the supplied heat exchangers have performed in excess of their design criteria, performing as intended.

“Working with HRS has been a seamless experience. Their equipment is of exceptional quality, and the heat exchangers have all met our design criteria perfectly, ensuring our production runs smoothly and efficiently.”

Top image credit: iStock.com/bhofack2