Manufacture of malt and beer with low temperature solar process heat

Abstract

The manufacture of malt and beer requires large amounts of electrical and thermal energy which is nowadays mainly based on fossil fuels. In State of the Art breweries 7.5-11.5 kWhel [1] and 16.7-33.3 kWhth [1, 2] per hl of beer are needed (reference: final energy demand) and the annual output of medium to large sized breweries may easily exceed one million hl. The entire process heat demand of the thermally driven processes in breweries and malting plants can be met with heat at a temperature of between 25 and 105°C on process level [3, 4]. This enables the integration of solar thermal energy supplied by conventional, nonconcentrating solar thermal collector technologies such as flat-plate or evacuated tube collectors. In fact, providing thermal energy by means of solar thermal systems is mostly energy efficient if the energy from the sun is converted into heat and supplied to the process at minimum required temperature level (referred to as solar integration on process level). With this regard and in the framework of a European Union-funded demonstration project, three large-scale solar thermal systems (each with an installed thermal peak capacity ≥ 1 MWth) are being realized. The focus of the project is to demonstrate the integration of large scale solar thermal systems on process level for different applications (mashing, pasteurization of beer, drying of green malt) at process temperatures below 80°C. This script mainly focuses on technical solutions for the hydraulic integration of large solar process heat applications equipped with flat plate collectors for a direct heat supply to thermally driven processes in the brewing industry.