Alfa Laval quickly inspects PHE for Diageo brewery

Rapid turnaround by Alfa Laval of a key plate heat exchanger recently enabled the Diageo beer-packaging plant at Runcorn to minimise downtime.

The Diageo Runcorn packaging plant is a Guinness-production site that packs and distributes three-million hectolitres of beer every year to outlets in the UK and to 180 other markets around the world.

Beer is tankered to the Runcorn facility from the main Guinness brewery in St James's Gate, Dublin, and packed into bottles, cans or kegs for distribution.

As in most brewery processes, heat plays a key role at every stage of the plant's operations.

Delivering this heat consistently at the correct temperature - or removing it when necessary to cool the beer - is the function of 10 large plate heat exchangers (PHEs).

If any of these PHEs fails to function correctly because of a problem with either the plates or the gaskets, the result is an extremely expensive loss of production.

Consequently, all of the major PHEs on the 18-acre Runcorn site - irrespective of original manufacturer - are protected through a performance agreement provided by heat-transfer specialist Alfa Laval.

Under the terms of the agreement, Alfa Laval inspects and carries out hydrostatic pressure tests on each PHE plate pack on a regular basis and also holds a spare plate pack in reserve for emergencies.

Routine testing involves opening the plate pack, inspecting each plate for signs of wear such as cracks or pinholes, reporting the unit's condition and recommending any remedial work that may be necessary to the site engineering staff.

Since the objective is to keep downtime to a minimum, if any major work such as re-gasketting is required, it must be accomplished within a tight timeframe.

It ideally has to be timed to coincide with a scheduled shutdown.

Even then, the speed with which the plate packs are turned round is crucial to the success of the operation.

This is especially true when it comes to the PHE installed in the beer-kegging section, which also acts as the main beer-pasteuriser for the plant.

Consisting of a pack of 529 stainless-steel plates sealed with EPDM gaskets, this exchanger handles flows of 500 hectolitres an hour, using steam as the heating medium to heat the Guinness to 72C.

According to Ralph Hearn, the keg-plant area engineer: 'Pasteurisation is the key to ultimate beer quality and freshness, so this particular PHE is central to the output of the whole plant.

'When it is out of commission, production comes to a full stop.

When the plant recently closed for a scheduled service shutdown, it provided a window of just five days in which to remove the plate heat exchanger, transport it to Alfa Laval's re-gasketting plant in Camberley, recondition and re-gasket the plate pack and put it back into service.

Fortunately, Alfa Laval had geared up to handle the Guinness exchanger as quickly as possible.

The unit was inspected for cracks and pin holes using a dye-detection system.

The gaskets were removed and replaced and the exchanger then went through a series of tests before being returned to Runcorn for re-installation and final in-situ testing.

Just four days after being disassembled, the re-gasketted unit was re-connected to the process line and operating at full capacity.

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