2014, 100% of the energy which the cooperative brewery uses to produce 300,000 hectolitres of beer a year is now supplied from heat produced at the biomass CHP station which is operated by the Murau public utility company. It is no longer necessary to burn any fossil fuel to make beer at the brewery. This is a new milestone, and it creates new opportunities to reduce energy consumption in the brewing process using “low-temperature process heat”. The heat is supplied in the form of hot water generated at the CHP station constructed in 2011 and operated by the Murau public utility company which uses only wood from the region as the source of fuel. From the energy policy standpoint, the project is highly significant, and Austrian Minister of Agriculture and Environment Management Andrä Rupprechter attended the official opening ceremony at the “low-temperature Mura brewery” on May 2nd, 2014.Ultra-modern brewing technology installed in existing traditional brewing tanks
Conversion of the brewhouse to the Steinecker EquiTherm system was one of the major factors which made migration to CO2-neutral heat energy generated from regional renewable resources feasible. All of the energy needed for mashing is supplied from the wort chilling process. As the brewery wished to retain the traditional character of the existing brewhouse with its copper hoods, Krones installed the cutting-edge technology into the existing copper tanks. The entire insides of the mashing tanks and the bulk of the wort boiling system were retrofit with the latest Krones-Steinecker technology. The existing wort chiller was also upgraded to the EquiTherm system. The interaction between the mashing tank and very low-loss energy recovery between boiling and chilling plays a crucial role in the “energy seesaw” function of the EquiTherm system.
Hot water instead of steam in the brewhouse
Steam at temperatures of around 130°C - 150°C is currently used at most state-of-the art breweries. In the past at the Murau brewery, the steam temperature was actually 160°C.
Discontinuous heat generation and high condensate and flash steam losses make steam boilers at many breweries relatively inefficient. This is not the case in Murau. Now that the brewery is using the EquiTherm system, energy consumption is extremely low and the brewing process takes place at very low temperatures. The maximum temperature at the "low-temperature Mura brewery" is now only needed to bring the wort to the boiling point, and right from the commissioning phase hot water at less than 115 °C has proven to be sufficient. Heat is transferred in Murau using a low-loss heat transfer station and an energy storage unit which was designed specifically for the peak loads and Steinecker EquiTherm system heat recovery. The storage unit supplies regenerative and recuperative heat to the entire brewery.
The Murau public utility company under the leadership of Director Kurt Woitischek and his team have taken a big and highly important step which will help the region to retain the wealth created from energy generation and provide a source of renewable energy based on water and wood resources for generation of electricity and hot water. 100% of the electricity and bio district heat used at the brewery is now generated with renewable resources. Fossil fuel is now only used for the vehicle fleet. The approach taken by the brewery under the direction of Executive Board Chairman Johann Lassacher, Managing Director Josef Rieberer and Brewermaster Günter Kecht and Christoph Lippert-Pagany is probably unique in the brewing industry. Energy consumption has been reduced not only by the converting process heat supply system but even more importantly by lowering the "process heat temperature".
It has long been the policy at the Murau brewery to make environmental awareness a central aspect of its production operations. The declared goal is to make the brewery CO2-neutral. The cooperative brewery has a 500-year history. It is committed to the bio region and the energy vision of Murau which is a climate alliance community. Murau hopes to achieve energy autonomy by 2015. The electricity supplied by the public utility Ccmpany to the brewery is generated with the aid of hydroelectric power. All of the electricity used in the district is now generated in the region. Integration of the brewery into the heat distribution network is a major milestone in the “Murau energy vision: a district on the road to energy independence” which if all goes well will become a reality by 2015.
