How to take practical steps toward energy efficiency

The Sustainable Farming Fund from the Ministry supports New Zealand wineries for Primary Industries. It provides recommendations on improving efficiency in wine making.

Tools are available to help them reach their goals, such as the benchmarking and energy and water savings tool, developed in California and adopted to New Zealand conditions, and the winery energy saver toolkit, created by South Australian Wine Industry Association.

These tools provide practical advice on cutting down energy costs, and determining the main areas requiring improvement, as refrigeration and tank storage, pumping, compressed air, hot water, HVAC, and lighting.

There are also knowledgeable consultants and suppliers of equipment, helping wineries invest wisely, achieving a quick return on investment and getting tangible results.

An average winery uses 5000 to 10,000Lts of hot water a day, with water heated up to 90°C for sterilizing purposes, or up to 65°C for barrel and tank cleaning, or up to 40°C for gentle warming of the product.

Condensing boilers recover the heat lost by water vapour in the flue gas, which saves on fuel consumption. Replacing a 15-year-old boiler to a condensing one will cut on natural gas or LPG costs by up to 30 per cent.

Saint Roch condensing boilers have 90 per cent to 96 per cent efficiency depending on the operating temperatures, which is 15-30 per cent higher than conventional boilers.

Thanks to the premix burner, which guarantees maximum mixing of gas and air for combustion, emissions of NOx and CO are 80-90 per cent less compared to conventional boilers (NOx < 20 ppm, CO < 35 ppm).

Integrated control systems allow users to adjust such parameters as temperature to their requirements. Condensing boilers can be combined with solar power, making hot water even cheaper.

There is also a pump that offers high product recovery, saving both the product and energy – it’s an eccentric disc pump from Mouvex.

This positive displacement pump has low linear speed and high volumetric efficiency that allows it to act as a metering device, precisely measuring equal volumes of product for bottling or packaging. Mouvex pumps improve the quality of the product, allowing transfer of grapes without smashing the seeds. This pump is used in wineries for product transfer from storage tanks to tangential filters, or to bottling tanks.

The Winery Energy Saver Tool Kit gives highly valuable recommendations on managing compressed air energy consumption. If you need a replacement, then an Hitachi screw compressor, combining energy savings offers low environmental impact and low running costs. These air compressors consume less oil, are quiet and reliable.

One of the best ways to cut on the compressed air costs is not to use compressed air for certain operations, such as drying bottles prior to labelling.

The solution here would be blower operated air knives, saving up to 85 per cent in running costs compared to compressed air knives. They are easy to install and require minimum maintenance. Air knives can be used not only for bottle drying but also for fruit drying.

The size of the winery, its location, and presence of accompanying businesses, current technologies and fuel availability determine the best solutions and the most suitable equipment for the particular enterprise. Hurl Nu-Way (HNW) will be happy to assist you in choosing the small practical steps leading to tangible results in saving energy.

www.demm.co.nz/readerenquiry #141120