Brewery cuts water usage by over a third
Improved monitoring helps Bath Ales reduce consumption
Key points
Bath Ales brewed its first beer in 1995 at a small brewery in Somerset. As demand grew, the company bought its own pub and moved production to Bristol before being acquired by Cornwall’s St Austell Brewery. In 2018, a new multi-million-pound operation, Hare Brewery, was opened at Bath Ales’ existing headquarters, doubling the available brewing capacity to 50,000 barrels a year.
The challenge
As a key ingredient in beer and an essential component in a range of production processes, water is the lifeblood of breweries. Reducing the volume of water used in production along with any resulting wastewater is an important concern for all brewers, both to save money and to reduce the environmental impact of the business.
Bath Ales approached Endress+Hauser for help after realising that their water usage at the Hare Brewery was too high. Without any means of monitoring where the water was being lost, there was no way to make efficiency improvements.
“It was one of the key focuses when I joined the company,” explains Engineering Manager Matt Newman. “We’re on mains water and we’re charged for the trade effluent going out as well, so any wastage is quite significant in terms of cost.”
The solution
As part of a site-wide assessment, Endress+Hauser determined which water lines would benefit from monitoring and recommended a cost-effective solution: a high-accuracy Promag W400 flowmeter to be installed at the mains water inlet to the brewery as well as 12 lower-cost flowmeters for submetering.
In addition, Endress+Hauser supplied data collection panels that capture the information from the flowmeters and automatically upload into the data management and reporting platform eSight, which provides continuous monitoring of performance to baseline targets. The data is presented in user-defined pie charts and graphs, making it easy to monitor how much water is being used in each part of the brewery.
The solution has resulted in impressive savings, bringing the ratio of water used as a proportion of the end product down from 8:1 to 5:1, meaning that five pints of water instead of eight are now needed for every pint of beer produced.
“As well as giving us better visibility of the overall water usage, it helped us to identify key bits of equipment that weren’t working to specification, which we wouldn’t have known about had we not monitored it,” says Matt Newman. “By working with us to achieve our vision within budget, Endress+Hauser was certainly key to the understanding of the overall project and making sure that at the end of it we could deliver the reductions that we were hoping to see.”
The benefits
As well as the obvious cost savings from reducing the volume of water used and subsequent wastewater produced, accurate monitoring has given Bath Ales a better overview of its process, as Matt Newman confirms: “The cost savings are great, and the project quite clearly paid for itself, but for me the continual monitoring is the biggest benefit because you’re able to react quickly to small changes that would normally go unnoticed. Being able to pinpoint very accurately using this system is a great benefit.”
Impressed with the results achieved so far, Bath Ales is looking to make further improvements, targeting a 4:1 water ratio in future, as well as considering adding new metering for steam, electricity and compressed air as part of the business’s sustainability planning.
“We’re at the point where we’re monitoring water to quite a specific and accurate level, we know where the baselines and trends are, and we can identify any spikes that need to be addressed,” says Matt Newman. “As we make continuous improvements to the brewery, it would be nice to drive down that water usage even further and monitor other services using the same software.”
Solutions for water monitoring
With increasing populations, changing climate patterns and growing industrial demands, there is an urgent need to manage water resources sustainably. The Committee on Climate Change, an independent body that advises the government on preparing for and adapting to the impacts of climate change, estimates that demand for water in England will exceed supply by between 1.1 billion and 3.1 billion litres per day by the 2050s. This heightened awareness of the potential for water scarcity has prompted businesses to re-evaluate their water usage practices and adopt more responsible approaches to water management.
Businesses across all industrial sectors can benefit from adopting water conservation measures to reduce their environmental impact, enhance resource efficiency and ensure long-term sustainability. Accurate measurement of water use at various stages of production is paramount to gain insights into where, when and how water is being used and providing a foundation for informed decision-making.
By continuously monitoring and analysing water usage data, businesses can track the effectiveness of their conservation efforts over time, driving ongoing improvements in resource management and sustainability practices.
With an in-depth understanding of process industries and an unrivalled instrumentation portfolio, Endress+Hauser has a proven record of helping companies to reduce their water consumption, achieving both financial savings and environmental benefits. From cutting-edge technology to expert engineering support, we offer a range of cost-effective and compliant water monitoring solutions.
Equally as important as monitoring water consumption is the measurement of process water quality. Particularly if it has been recycled to save production costs, water quality must be meticulously monitored. Endress+Hauser offers reliable, flexible and low-maintenance solutions to monitor process water and effluent, including pre-calibrated Memosens sensors and water analysis systems covering parameters such as COD, dissolved oxygen, pH/ORP, turbidity, chlorine and ammonium.
Much more than just an instrumentation manufacturer, we also offer project management and consultation services, testing, troubleshooting and training. Using the Mogden formula, we can calculate your trade effluent discharge costs with measurements from water meters and COD analysers. We can also help with mass balance monitoring using a data management and reporting platform to identify loss and waste.
For more information about how Endress+Hauser can help your business to reduce its water consumption and monitor water quality, visit here
Endress+Hauser is committed to helping its customers achieve real-time accurate measurements and take control of their processes. Find out how you can begin to unlock the potential of your assets here: www.smarter-decisions.co.uk
Endress+Hauser UK
- +44 161 286 5000
- info@uk.endress.com
- https://www.uk.endress.com
- Floats Road Manchester M23 9NF GB
About us
A strong partner worldwide
Endress+Hauser is a global leader in measurement instrumentation, services and solutions for industrial process engineering. We provide process solutions for flow, level, pressure, analytics, temperature, recording and digital communications, optimising processes in terms of economic efficiency, safety and environmental impact. Our customers come from various industries, including chemical, food & beverage, life sciences, power & energy, primaries & metal, oil & gas and water & wastewater.
Benefits
- Net sales of 2.4 billion euros – a strong partner
- More than 13,900 employees worldwide – a reliable employer
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- Nearly 7,800 patents and patent applications – innovative and creative
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Industries we supply to
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