With the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by using alternative energy sources available on site, a well-known Belgian multinational company which produces of the most famous beer brands has decided to install a Uniconfort biomass plant in its headquarters in Brussels (Belgium).
The beer production process generates a lot of barley and malt husk, a particular biomass because as it is an agricultural biomass it has high volatility, high ash content and high silicon content, which is mainly responsible for abrasion phenomena. For these reasons, it is a difficult biomass to manage and requires a customized system.
Uniconfort has studied a solution that is as flexible and reliable as possible for this installation: the main engineering choice is related to the heat exchanger, which is with water tubes with vertical development, instead of being a standard one with smoke tubes. This solution allows high reliability and durability of the system components. The plant produces steam which is used in the beer production process, more precisely during the fermentation process to mature the must inside the steel barrels and keep it at a constant temperature for a certain period of time.
The keywords of this project are:
CIRCULAR ECONOMY: 100% recovery and valorization of food waste. This plant uses 770 kg/h of malt husk at full power to produce steam which is used in the brewing process.
REDUCTION OF CO2 EMISSIONS: 3,048 tons of CO2 emissions avoided in one year for each MW produced by replacing the diesel boiler with a Uniconfort biomass boiler. This plant is 2.7 MWt which means 8,230 tons of CO2 emissions avoided every year.
HIGH DURABILITY AND RECYCLABILITY OF THE EQUIPMENT: The useful life of our plants is 30 years, during which they can be renewed with new technologies. Furthermore, almost 70% of the weight of our boilers is made up of fully recyclable materials such as steel and copper.
| THE INSTALLATION IN NUMBER | |
| BOILER | HURACAN |
| TOTAL POWER | 2.7 MW |
| COMBUSTIBLE | BARLEY AND MALT HUSK |
| PRODUCTION | STEAM |