Beer Recovery - Food & Beverage

Scaling Up Yeast Recovery: Best Practices for Commercial Breweries

The increasing cost of raw materials and energy is forcing the brewing industry to investigate new opportunities for increasing extract yield without compromising quality. Excess yeast contains a significant amount of extract which can be recovered by concentrating the yeast with modern cross-flow technology. By combining this technology with controlled Día-filtration the yield can even be boosted. The recovered beer can be blended with the original beer up to 5% volume without negatively influencing the taste. Beer recovery can contribute to cost savings in the brewery.

Pall has developed the unique Keraflux beer recovery platform. Keraflux® is a Pall crossflow technology, specially designed for handling high solid bioproduct streams in large quantities. It uses Exekia® ceramic membranes. The Keraflux solution is a modular system for standalone design incorporating all relevant items for plug-and-play operation:

Crossflow module with ceramic membranes
Frequency controlled loop pump with cooler
CIP unit for cleaning
Control cabinet with all relevant measurement devices

Cost Reduction by Process Control

The process for yeast extract recovery uses a ceramic cross flow technology with specific control features to achieve reduced costs. The below table describes the benefits of this process:

Benefits	Details
Cost Savings	Low consumption of cleaning agents and water High System availability and production time
Long Production Cycles and Less Cleaning Cycle	Control of feed flow Control of cross flow velocity Control of permeate flow and trans membrane pressure (TMP) at each module level against set points. Continuous adjustment of the process parameters to variable set points minimize energy consumption and provide gentle treatment of the yeast during the entire process.
Yield, Energy Consumption and Performance Improvements	The beer recovery is conducted in a batch process, which offers several advantages: Improved performance (up to 20%) and quality due to lower yeast concentration in system during batch cycle Reduced energy consumption (up to 25%) due to lower yeast concentration in system during batch cycle Yield up to 80% due to diafiltration
Quality Enhancement	To evaluate the percentage of beer which can be blended back to production without compromising the beer quality, several test were conducted. By chemical and sensory analysis carried out by independent institutes, it was shown that a back blending ratio of up to 5 % volume is suitable. The superior quality of the recovered and blended beers has been confirmed as follows: No identification of blended beers by taste panel Minimum deviation (within analytical method sensitivity) by basic analytics No significant differences on esters No significant differences on short chain fatty acids No significant difference in stale flavor active substances - Closed system for minimum oxygen uptake - Clear cut off with low turbidity and almost yeast free beer High microbiological safety due to easy cleaning and sterilization with hot water up to 90 °C (194 °F

Multi-channel Membralox IC ceramic elements deliver high-capacity crossflow filtration of process fluids and effluents in the food & beverage industry. Their innovative and highly compact design in unique 4 and 5.5 mm channel geometries provides superior filtration area per multi-channel element - up to 570 m2/m3.

Membralox IC filtration modules offer up to 45% more capacity than standard module configurations, enabling optimized system loop design. This results in more compact systems with a smaller footprint and reduced hardware costs. The smaller hold-up volume of the system loops also results in a significant reduction in related water and chemical cleaning costs.

Pall Membralox IC membranes, 100% ceramic and 100% bubble point tested, feature the same exceptional performance, mechanical and chemical resistance and service life as the well-recognized Membralox product range.

The short return on investment of 1 - 2 years makes this technology and the investment very attractive to the brewing industry.