Hydract - Control by water

CONTROL BY WATER

Take control by water – due to the incompressibility of water the Hydract process valve is unaffected by pressure transients – increasing your Overall Equipment Effectiveness and minimizing your maintenance.

SUSTAINABLE
BEVERAGE
THE EASY WAY

Sustainable goals in a consumer-driven market challenge the beverage industry. Scarce water resources may force e.g. breweries to move location - or to rethink who, where, and how. With water-controlled actuators, the industry can achieve more than 90% reduction in energy consumption, compared to traditional pneumatic actuators.

This actively reduces both your carbon footprint and drastically decreases the need for harmful cleaning chemicals. Not only will you exceed the standards of sustainability, you will be brewing a better world. Using fewer resources will make your business stronger, more sustainable, and more profitable.

HYDRACT engineered by heart

Dive into our story, what we do and how we came about.

The video opens in YouTube and has Danish, English and Spanish subtitles.

DISCOVER
THE BREWERY
OF TOMORROW

How water hydraulics is
(R)evolutionizing Carlsberg

Brewing a game-changer at Carlsberg Fredericia.

Over the past 13 years, Carlsberg has been closely involved in the development and testing of the HYDRACT valve, and since 2016, Carlsberg has implemented more than 600 HYDRACT valves in production at the company's brewery in Fredericia, Denmark.

The development started in 2008 as an energy-saving project - powered by water hydraulics. The patented valve technology reduces the electrical power consumption for operating valves by more than 90%, and because water, unlike air, is incompressible, HYDRACT's water hydraulic valves provide an unprecedented level of precision and control because the valve is not affected by pressure surges in the process line. This means that unintentional mixing of fluids is not possible, for the benefit of reducing waste and increasing food safety.

The technology and valve further evolved from being the sustainable alternative to ordinary pneumatic valves to also enabling high-precision inline mixing and brewing of High-Gravity-Beer (HGB) and late product differentiation.

"The tests of the HYDRACT valve have exceeded our expectations. The precision and repeatability achieved with water hydraulics as an alternative to compressed air enable a completely new approach to efficient and sustainable beer production. It fundamentally changes the way we can produce beer in the future," says Anders Kokholm, brewery director at Carlsberg Supply Company Denmark.

For a brewery like Carlsberg, this means that instead of brewing and storing beer that is ready for bottling, the brewer can now brew and store only a few basic types of beer with special taste and a high alcohol content, High-Gravity-Beer (HGB).

By mixing these special types of beer and diluting them with de-oxygenated water in a continuous process on the way to the bottling line, HYDRACT creates the opportunity to mix beers On-Demand and Just-In-Time.

The advantage for the brewery is that it becomes possible to only brew and storefull batches of beer with an alcohol percentage that is higher than the final beer. This makes it possible to get optimal utilization of both brewing and storage capacity, which optimizes operating costs and ROI.

In relation to the growing demand in the market for more and more new products, it will be possible to reduce the lead time on a finished beer from weeks to hours. The company is quickly realizing the benefits of changing its setup. “The process is very unique,” says Anders Kokholm. “and you cannot find a valve controlled like this one in the market today.”

The new inline mixing project not only achieves a significant energy saving of more than 90% for the valves but also generates less waste and consumes less water while reducing chemical use and cleaning significantly. Because Carlsberg will be able to brew bigger batches of the same HGB there will be fewer bright beer batches per year – hence less cleaning and a higher filling degree of the BBT.

The way inline mixing is done at Carlsberg, we significantly increase the capacity of the BBT bottleneck in the brewery, whilst lowering the unit cost of producing beer. The system is fully automated using advanced valve, measurement, and software technologies controlling key parameters, such as alcohol, CO2, and colour in real-time, producing final products within specifications and maximizing line utilization, from the smallest batch to the highest speed and capacity available in the industry, avoiding the need for mixing tanks and systems.

Power

Precision

”With the valves from HYDRACT, Carlsberg’s production becomes faster and more efficient. Our production becomes easier and cheaper. We achieve better utilization of the raw materials as well as a much more flexible production with increased process reliability. It is crucial for Carlsberg to be better and more competitive than our competitors. It opens so many opportunities and creates such a good economy that it would be wrong to do otherwise."

Peter Rasmussen
Senior process manager. Carlsberg Denmark

"If you want to list all the benefits of using Hydract's valves, then it will be a very long list. The fact that it can stay closed and regulate precisely gives us at Carlsberg the process advantage that we can make a very late product differentiation. We can cut down on our inventories to achieve higher efficiency at the bottling plant and we can produce On-Demand and Just-In-Time while reducing our waste. It will pay off – big time!"

anders kokholm
brewing and quality director Carlsberg denmark

ADVANTAGES

late product differentiation
faster reaction to market
better line utilization
reduce UNDER- OR OVER-PRODUCTION
avoid UNINTENTIONAL MIXING OF FLUIDS
PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE
OPERATIONAL FLEXIBILITY

REDUCED VARIABLE COSTS
BI-DIRECTIONAL FLOW
ON-DEMAND / JUST IN TIME PRODUCTION
eliminate water hammers
REDUCED CLEANING, CHEMICALS, AND WATER
FULL DIGITAL CONTROl
Higher overall equipment efficiency