Tennent’s has made significant investments in various carbon reduction projects including carbon capture and anaerobic digestion plants.
the brewer has now partnered with SEEPEX to improve energy efficiency in its spent grain transfer process, which is the most air intensive process on site.
Tennent's Wellpark Brewery is Scotland's oldest brewery, tracing its roots back to the 1500s. Since its establishment in 1885, it has consistently produced award-winning brews.
Today, Tennent’s Lager dominates the Scottish market, accounting for every second pint of lager consumed in the country.
As part of the brewing process, spent grain is transferred from two mash filters that drain the spent grain to 24%DS.
Originally, the spent grain fell from the mash filters into an expeller unit from where it was conveyed over 64m with a 20m elevation to the silo.
With the expeller, the grain transfer took 90 minutes after each brew and used 1,125Nm³ of air.
Tennent’s explored the benefits of SEEPEX’s cutting-edge Smart Air Injection (SAI) technology.
This ground-breaking solution combines an open hopper progressive cavity pump and pneumatic dense-phase conveying to efficiently transfer 15-40%DS spent grains, draff, and hops in plugs. Controlled air pulses enable seamless conveying over long distances.
SEEPEX established the optimum operation point with minimum air consumption to reduce the original air consumption and carbon footprint, and also assessed the energy efficiency in comparison with the initial system.
The company was able to calculate all the consumptions eliminating the need to carry out a trial.
The demonstrated energy efficiency from SEEPEX Smart Air Injection (SAI) enabled Tennent’s to access the Scottish Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (SIETF), designed to support the development and deployment of technologies that enable businesses with high energy use to transition to a low carbon future.
Through this, the government funded 30% of the project.
Tennent’s brewery partners with SEEPEX
