Ottakringer Brewery relies on flowmeters from Siemens for exact carbon dioxide measurements

Vienna, Austria. As a traditional familyrun company, the Ottakringer Brewery greatly values quality and sustainability. This also applies to its use of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is needed both for filtration of the beer and for the filling process. Using Sitrans FC flowmeters from Siemens, Ottakringer can now precisely determine and account for its CO2 consumption. This helps to optimize working processes and increase the energy efficiency of the brewery.

The delicious fresh taste of beer is achieved in part through the addition of carbon dioxide. The gas avoids oxidation and is responsible for carbonation. In the past, the necessary carbon dioxide measurements at the Ottakringer Brewery were taken using thermal flowmeters. Due to significant measuring errors and a small measuring range, this often led to balancing errors and CO2 losses that could not be accounted for. It was also difficult to detect leaks quickly. New meters have been installed to resolve these issues.

 High level of accuracy and reliability

For production in the fermentation and storage areas and for filling bottles, cans and barrels, Siemens installed a total of four Sitrans FC Coriolis flowmeters. The flowmeter systems acquire not only the mass flow rate but also the density and temperature of liquids and gaseous media very accurately as standard. At the heart of the FCT030 transmitter is the precision plus algorithm, which ensures fast and reliable signal processing. The Digital Sensor Link (DSL) digitizes the Coriolis signal at an early stage of the measurement to achieve an optimized signal-to-noise ratio. This leads to a measuring accuracy of 0.1 percent and repeatability of 0.05 percent. The 100 Hz data update rate also helps to ensure that dosing tasks are completed extremely efficiently and measuring tasks are completed very reliably with rapid response times. Using these measuring systems, Ottakringer can for the first time clearly account for how much carbon dioxide each plant is actually using. In addition, using the new measurements it is possible to control all CO2 evaporators fully automatically. Evaporators that are not required can now be shut down easily using exact measured value acquisition. Ottakringer therefore benefits from savings in energy costs and increased efficiency.