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07/06/2010
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Anheuser-Busch InBev UK's Magor Brewery, in Monmouthshire, South Wales, says it has installed six direct-coupled peristaltic hose pumps in place of previously failing piston pumps.
 Paul Evans, tech services first line manager at the Magor Brewery, says that the earlier conventional piston pumps were threatening quality by endangering the beer filtration process.
He explains that they were being used to does kieselguhr slurry to form a bed on a plate and frame filter, but unreliability was leading to a significant opportunity to introduce dissolved oxygen (DO) into the beer.
"Even the slightest traces of DO can change its flavour, making it taste stale. This can be catastrophic," he says.
"Unfortunately the stainless steel non-return valves on the discharge side of our piston pumps began to stick, due to the corrosive nature of the kieselghur slurry. As a result, we would end up maintaining or replacing the pumps, which would inevitably expose the beer to the atmosphere."
With three filter mains on site, InBev decided to trial an SPX25 peristaltic pump from Watson-Marlow Pumps. "The peristaltic operating principle intrigued us because it seemed there would be no way to introduce oxygen into our process," comments Evans. "However, the proof is in the pudding, so we introduced an SPX25 model to one of our filter mains."
The SPX25, which is based on a rugged hub with twin-bearing rotor at its core, combines the advantages of bare-shaft construction with those of a close-coupled pump. The pump bearings absorb the forces in the pump centrally, placing no load on the gearbox bearings, which means no coupling, no alignment and no heavy-duty base plate – resulting in less installation time, less maintenance and lower costs.
Trials were completed with flying colours, so InBev bought that pump, along with two more for its other filter mains. And such has been the success that the company has now acquired a further three peristaltic pumps for use in a different operation on a similar application.
"The pumps [on the filter mains] are linked via an inverter to our PLC using a SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition] interface so that we can ramp the speed up and down as required," explains Evans. "We also find the running signal to be extremely useful, so that if we come anywhere close to the 2,000 hours recommended by Watson-Marlow, we can change the hose as part of a planned and preventative maintenance schedule."
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Author
Brian Tinham
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