Electricity + Control September 2017

SENSORS. SWITCHES + TRANSDUCERS

Smarter CIDER Production Natlee Chetty, Endress+Hauser

15m high tanks containing 2 200 hl of cider.

Consumers in South Africa have become more discerning and demanding of cider.

C iders have been growing in popularity over the past few years. South Africa has expe- rienced robust year-on-year growth in vol- ume terms. With the variety of imports available to the South African consumer, Food and Beverage manufacturers have now added pressure to pro- duce their products in an even more competitive way than before, and at the same time respond- ing to consumers’ desires for new and appetising products, which are also environmentally friendly. The primary concern of any design engineer is to gain increased production and consistent product quality by employing the benefits of effective pro- cess automation. The company High-Tech Processing is a brew- eries, beverages, alcoholic and soft drink plants solutions provider and consultant. They offer comprehensive, integrated engineering solutions to Food and Beverage manufacturers, while con- sistently meeting production quality standards. Well renowned for their work with the big names in alcohol and beverage production, such as SAB, Distell and Coco-Cola. High-Tech Processing was recently involved in a huge plant expansion for an international beverage manufacturer in South Afri- ca. With Endress+Hauser, they were able to prime integration capabilities between products, system solutions and services to create a more efficient, cost saving operation for the customer. With almost 50 vessels to engineer and commis- sion, this was no small task for High-Tech Process- ing’s lead E&I Engineer, Reinhardt Grobler. When asked what their main challenges were, which they encountered during the project, Reinhardt said; “In building a beverage process plant, one of the engi- neer’s primary objectives is to gain increased pro- duction and consistent product quality by employing the benefits of effective process automation. The key in meeting this objective is by selecting suita- ble instrumentation which is capable of producing an accurate and repeatable indication of the process status. This may seem like an obvious statement, but with an overwhelming choice of techniques and wide variety of designs, on what basis does the en- gineer select the ‘ideal’ instruments?”

40 Electricity + Control

SEPTEMBER 2017