Accolade boosts bottling efficiency with oil-free compressors 16 November 2012

Accolade Wines is using recovered heat from oil-free compressors to pre-heat CIP (clean in place) water for two high-speed bottling lines at its plant in Avonmouth, Bristol.

One of the largest operations of its type in Europe – and run by the world's fifth largest wine company – each line is capable of producing over half a million bottles of wine a day running at 400 bottles per minute.

Compressed air requirements are now met by an Atlas Copco compressed air installation comprising two water-cooled ZR90 VSD oil-free rotary screw compressors together with a fixed-speed ZR75 machine.

"[The plant] was designed from the outset to minimise energy usage by employing the best available techniques, which is why we chose Atlas Copco ZR oil-free compressors," states Julian Rainbow, utilities and process engineering manager.

As for the energy-saving bonus from the compressors' heat recovery facilities, he explains that heat from the air compression process is transferred to the cooling water through the compressor's internal components to provide hot water at 80°C.

This, he says, can be used for process operations, such as cleaning the 84 bulk storage tanks, each storing 55,000 litres of wine transferred from shipping containers.

Atlas Copco claims that for compressed air users like Accolade Wines, which integrate the flow of hot water into their plant processes, there is a potential to recover up to 95% of the compressor's electrical energy input as hot water.

Indeed, the company points out that Atlas Copco's ZR series of water-cooled, oil-free, 55 to 900kW compressors have been certified by TÜV as capable of recovering up to 100% of the electrical input energy as hot water under specific design conditions.

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Atlas Copco Compressors

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