Experts in air filtration

Project PB – Large CleanPulse Bag Filter with Sodium Bicarbonate Silo, Wet Ash De-duster, CEMS and Chimney

Heineken UK – Royal Brewery, Manchester and John Smith’s Brewery, Tadcaster

Spent Grain from Royal Brewery Manchester

At the Royal Brewery in Manchester, U.K., green beer is not just for St. Patrick’s Day. Soon all the beer produced by the plant will be “green,” thanks to a new energy efficient combined-heat-and-power system (CHP) fuelled by wastes from the brewing process.

When installation is completed in 2009, the CHP system will supply 60 percent of the plant’s steam and almost all its electricity. Carbon emissions from fossil fuels will be cut by 87 percent.

The brewery, owned by Heineken after its acquisition of Scottish & Newcastle’s British business, is part of a growing number of European food and beverage companies discovering the power of waste. Rising energy and waste disposal costs combined with pressure to cut carbon emissions and divert wastes from landfills is spurring firms to implement new technologies converting wastes into renewable energy. But efforts are still in the early stages.

The Royal Brewery CHP plant will produce 7.4 megawatts (MW) of thermal power and 3.1 MW of electricity, fuelled by a mixture of spent grain left over from the brewing process and clean wood waste. Wood is required due to insufficient quantities of spent grain.

Information taken from the July 2008 Issue Biomass magazine

http://www.biomassmagazine.com

In addition Filter Designs also supplied the same package to John Smith’s Brewery in Tadcaster for an identical project which ran simultaneously.

FDL Scope of Supply

Filter – CPB 940 ‘Cleanpulse filter
Ducting – Inlet and outlet headers only
Silo – 65m³ bolted panel silo with skirted enclosure for Sodium Bi-Carbonate storage
Stack – 25m with CEMS WID testing platform
CEMS – Stack mounted continuous emissions monitoring system via CODEL
Dust discharge- ‘Wetdust’ de-duster and conditioning screw discharging into ‘sealed’ skip

Additions
Damper operated filter by-pass ducting
Bag filter heater battery

The landmark Royal Brewery in Moss Side, Manchester and the glass fronted CHP plant

We were contracted through Penborn Technical Services (now Alectia Ltd.) to provide two filtration systems along with anciliary components to serve Wartsila supplied combined heat and power plants for Heineken UK at the Royal Brewery in Manchester and John Smith’s Brewery, Tadcaster. At the time of installation the £17.5 million investment was the largest single investment in renewable technology ever in the UK by a non utility company.

Sadly, due to a complex set of circumstances involving the re-sale cost of spent grain rising and issues with the feed system the plant was not considered viable before ever becoming fully operational and was mothballed early in 2010 pending changes in circumstances concerning the fuel supply. In April 2013 a locally based paper, Yorks THE PRESS reported the Biomass energy plant is to be scraped and dismantled

“Despite great efforts over the commissioning process, the system did not work for the brewery’s exact circumstances, and finally it was concluded that the brewery had to accept biomass energy generation would not be an on-going project. Heineken point out that they were pioneers in this application, and sometimes being green takes courage to try out new ideas which don’t always work.”

Project Special Points of Interest

Erection at Royal Brewery

The filter, chimney and silo erection required additional planning above normal due to the location. Royal Brewery produces around 700 million pints of beer and cider per annum and operates 24hrs a day 363 days a year and operates a one way system around the site for lorries headed for the canning area. The filter and silo are sited on the edge of the plinth alongside that road adding considerable complexity to the logistics of erection.

The filters location overlooks one of the main access routes in to/out off Manchester and during erection the limited area we had to work in required the filter sections to be swung by crane outside the retaining wall of the brewery site and into close proximity of the A5103.

Dust Discharge.

We were required to deposit the ash/bicarb residue in a skip or similar rather than a bulk bag or blowing into a silo. In order to this we recognised the dust couldn’t be deposited dry due to amount of dust that would inevitably be created.

We sourced a ‘WetDust’ conditioning screw conveyor which introduces a variable quantity of water into the tube of the conveyor to ‘dampen’ the dust prior to the skip.

This follows on from a conventional ‘V’ trough screw conveyor and a rotary valve. In addition we designed the Wetdust to be fitted directly to a Slewing ring in order to allow simple removal of the skips.

A proximity switch was employed to ensure the Wetdust would only be operational in the correct location to deposit into a skip. The skip sits on a weigh platform to ensure the plant operators are aware of the dust level.

Tadcaster – horizontal traveerse screw to slewing ring mounted Wetdust over skip.

Filter By-Pass
On initial start up at Manchester it was discovered that in the first 12 hours following start the gas stream contained large amounts of Tar from the 100% wood being used as a fuel source in the place of the intended spent grain content.

This was exacerbated by combustion being started as a regular fire, without burners or accelerants to assist start-up. As such the bags became ‘blinded’ during this period and rendered them useless as a result. With the consent of the environmental agency, the client gained dispensation for the filter to be by-passed on initial start up only.

Filter Designs therefore were contracted to design and install a filter by-pass duct. Pneumatic dampers and temperature probes were employed to ensure that the filter was only by-passed under a specific set of circumstances. We were also requested to install a battery heater/fan to ensure the temperature inside the filter could be raised in anticipation of the filter coming on-line in an effort to pre-empt the potential condensation issues as the warm air enters the potentially cold chamber of the bag filter as the filter is brought ‘on line’.

The installation of the by-pass duct was made particularly difficult even without the one-way system, 24hr access issue at Royal Brewery because of the desired location of the duct behind the bag filter resulting in its extremely close proximity to the glazed front of the CHP building.

The duct insulated and clad.

Filter by access road fully insulated and clad.

Chimney installed showing WID platform and secondary platform adjoining the bag filter for ease of access.

The long discharge screw to wet deducter can also be made out.

The ducting support was by others.

Clockwise from top left:

- Tadcaster silo

- Silo components.

- Silo control panel.

- Bi-Carb metering/blowing.

Designer: Roger CallisProject Manager: Stewart Callis

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