Keeping the beer flowing

The compressor provides a reliable and economic supply of oil-free compressed air which is used to produce the company's award-winning beers.

At the start of the year, the brewery extended its brewhouse and added several new items including a new lauter tun. New energy stores, which enable waste heat to be used, were installed and control technology was modernised and extended.

As part of this work, the brewery invested in a new compressed air station. "We were using two oil-free piston compressors and one compressor for the control air, which was fed in a separate network. In terms of energy, this was not ideal.” says Master brewer and brewing engineer Cornelius Faust.

It was decided from the start that the new system should be oil-free. Apart from this, the decision-makers were open to new solutions. They opted for a PureAir compressor from the CompAir DH range.

It is neither a piston compressor nor a screw compressor in the conventional sense. Instead, on the water-injected screw compressors a bronze alloy screw, which is combined with a pair of gate rotors made from carbon fibre-reinforced plastic, takes care of compression.

There is no metal-to-metal contact in the compression chamber. As a result, the compressor does not require any oil as a lubricating, cooling or sealing medium – which means that the compressed air is produced 100 % oil-free. As the operating principle of the air end block means that it runs very quietly, the PureAir compressors are characterised by low vibration and noise emissions.

Instead of oil, the DH compressors with PureAir technology use water as an efficient cooling medium. The compression temperatures are very low, with a maximum of 60°C. This leads to an almost isothermal compression, low energy consumption and high degree of efficiency. Low operating temperatures and bearing loads enable the use of maintenance-free sealed bearings, which remove the need for any oil lubrication in the compressor. The gearbox bearing is no longer needed, since the motor and air end block are directly coupled and the required speed is generated via an electronic gearbox.

At the Brauhaus Faust brewery, a highly compact, small, type D15H RS machine with regulated speed 15kW drive is used. It supplies compressed air with a volume flow of 0.67 to 2.3m3/min into the 8 bar network, thereby meeting the current demand, which is highly variable and means that a clear consumption profile cannot be identified. A downstream 'control filter' provides additional production reliability. A redundant system is not required in the compressed air station as the brewery generates the necessary nitrogen itself and, when servicing is required, the compressor for the nitrogen system also supplies the compressed air network.