Steam boilers are critical components of brewhouses and distilleries, ensuring the smooth execution of each brewing phase. Without steam boilers, beverages like beer couldn’t achieve the temperatures, aromas and flavors connoisseurs have come to know and love.
Whether you’re an aspiring brewery owner or you’ve been in the industry for years, it’s vital to understand how steam boilers aid the brewing process and necessary equipment. Discover the value steam boilers bring to the brewing industry and the various processes they help simplify.
What Is a Steam Boiler?
A steam boiler does exactly what the name implies — produces steam by burning fuel and heating water. Businesses can use the resulting steam for numerous purposes, like comfort heating, temperature control or domestic water heating. There are different types of steam boilers, depending on the energy source they rely on. Some examples are electric, oil and gas boilers.
Aside from breweries, many other commercial settings rely on boilers, including:
- Health care facilities: Steam boilers are fundamental in many hospitals, clinics and other health care settings. They assist with building heating, sterilization procedures, kitchen operation, laundry and other tasks.
- Food processing centers: These facilities often use steam boilers to heat and pasteurize different foods and beverages. Additionally, steam boilers can assist with cooking and drying processes.
- Manufacturing businesses: Boilers provide the steam required to maintain proper production temperatures.
Construction of a Steam Boiler
Boilers contain various moving parts that work together to burn fuel, generate heat and release steam. Here are some key components of a boiler:
- Heat exchanger: The heat exchanger allows the boiler to exchange heat between two substances — such as water and gas — without mixing them. It’s normally made of stainless steel and contains a long, coiled pipe. The heated liquid or gas passes through the pipe to heat the surrounding water.
- Combustion chamber: The combustion chamber is where the fuel and air interact. The mixture burns to create heat and steam.
- Expansion tank: The expansion tank provides a place for water to absorb and regulate pressure. It typically contains two sections — one controlled by an air valve to relieve pressure and one that accepts water from the boiler. The valve pushes against the water in the other section until the pressure is balanced.
- Blowdown valve: This device helps eliminate solid impurities from the boiler water. Steam pressure forces the water out of the boiler, and the water takes these solids with it.
- Return line: Steam return lines send water back to the boiler to be reheated and reused.
What Does a Steam Boiler Do in a Brewery?
Steam boilers are a common type of boiler in distilleries and breweries. That’s because they create steam for virtually every step of the brewing journey, including:
- Sterilizing the equipment.
- Cleaning kegs.
- Heating the water.
- Steeping the grains.
- Boiling the wort — the extracted liquid from the mashing process.
Brewers must achieve balanced temperatures. That way, the different ingredients can react properly and yield the desired results. To accomplish this, steam heating is necessary to heat water to specific temperatures.
Boilers can also help generate electricity in brewhouses, reducing the facility’s overall energy costs. Between providing steam and maintaining ideal temperatures, boilers are the backbone of brewing applications.
How Steam Boilers Facilitate Different Brewing Processes
From equipment cleaning to ingredient fermentation, steam boilers lend a helping hand through nearly every phase of brewing. Below are the different ways boilers streamline these processes.
1. Sanitation and Sterilization
Cleaning and sterilizing brewing equipment is a non-negotiable step. Thorough sanitization prevents bacteria, mold and yeast from developing and contaminating your brew. Steam boilers play a vital role in sterilizing brewing tools and equipment, such as brite tanks, mash tuns, fermenting machines, and bottles and cans.
Breweries use a few methods for cleaning and sterilizing equipment, like chemicals and dry heat. However, steam is the most foolproof way to eliminate any lingering bacteria and spores on brewing devices. Steam generates high temperatures that kill harmful microorganisms.
2. Mashing, Sparging and Lautering
As the mashed barley kernels move to the lauter tun — which functions like a large sieve — a steam boiler produces hot water and sprays it onto the grains. This process keeps the sugars moist.
During sparging and lautering, water filters through the husks of the grains. Hot water is poured over these grains to remove their sugars. To optimize this process, a steam boiler helps maintain the appropriate water temperature for heat transfer. Proper water temperatures keep the sparging and lautering steps smooth and efficient.
3. Boiling
Consistent heat is essential to ensure thorough boiling for hops — flowers added to retain beer freshness and longevity — and wort. A steam boiler promotes adequate heat circulation and transfer during the boiling stage. Boiling these ingredients is far more time-consuming without reliable heat transfer capabilities.
4. Fermentation
During fermentation, yeast converts the wort’s glucose to alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process gives beer its carbonation and alcohol concentration.
To help the yeast do its job effectively, it’s important to maintain even temperatures in the fermentation vessel. A steam boiler helps achieve the heat levels needed for fermentation.
5. Keg Cleaning
Besides sanitizing brewing tools, steam boilers help clean equipment for transporting beer. When keg lines and couplers aren’t cleaned correctly, leftover traces of yeast from brewing start to accumulate. Over time, this buildup can lead to clogged lines and compromised beverage flavors — not to mention the potential health risks from bacteria.
While hot water is helpful for cleaning kegs, using it exclusively won’t get the job done. Steam pressure ensures a more robust cleaning process. It helps sanitize kegs before they’re filled with beer for transport.
The Eco-Friendly Advantages of Using Steam Boilers
Steam boilers are designed to convert energy into heat, resulting in minimal energy loss during brewing. They also produce neutral greenhouse gas emissions. These qualities make them an eco-friendly steam resource for brewhouses.
Considering these advantages, steam boilers are an energy-efficient solution for breweries looking to decrease their emissions and carbon footprint. Plus, you don’t have to sacrifice manufacturing speed or product quality.
Common Issues Affecting Steam Boilers
Steam boilers are assets in the brewing industry. However, they aren’t immune to some of the problems impacting industrial water systems.
Scale
Scale is a white, chalky deposit comprised of minerals like iron, calcium and silica. It forms when these materials precipitate from boiler water and concentrate onto its heat transfer surfaces. Subsequently, it reduces heat transfer and efficiency.
This substance can cause other issues in boilers, as well. When heat transfer is compromised, heat exits the stack instead of converting into steam. As a result, the boiler burns more fuel to yield the desired amount of steam. This extra fuel consumption translates to higher operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
Because scale deposits are natural insulators, they can raise metal temperatures significantly. This temperature boost can increase the risk of tube overheating and failure.
Corrosion
Corrosion is the gradual degradation of metal. It usually stems from a reaction between the boiler’s metal and chemicals in the surrounding water or air. Other causes include acidic water and scale that traps sodium against the metal.
There are two main types of corrosion:
- General: General corrosion covers a metal component’s entire surface.
- Pitting: Pitting corrosion causes a heavier, faster concentration of corrosion in a smaller area.
Corrosion can wear down boiler components and negatively affect performance. It can also lead to pitting and holes in the metal, causing leaks in the system.
The Benefits of Maintaining Your Steam Boiler
Crafting high-quality beer or kombucha involves several steps — most of which call for steam. Many of these processes, such as boiling and mashing, depend on an even heat exchange.
When it comes to heating, energy costs are among the highest expenses. Fortunately, a reliable and well-maintained steam boiler can yield long-term time and cost savings. When your boiler, heating process and steam work together properly, they can help keep your energy bills at bay.
Regular boiler maintenance and water treatment are integral to a smooth brewing process. They also help prevent costly issues — like scale and corrosion — from disrupting steam boiler operation. You can reap many benefits from a regularly maintained boiler, including:
1. A Longer Service Life
Professional boiler water treatment lowers the risk of corrosion, degradation and failure. In turn, your steam boiler can experience a longer operational life.
2. Cost Savings and Energy Efficiency
Steam boiler maintenance helps minimize fuel and energy consumption as much as possible. The less fuel your boiler burns, the lower your monthly utility and operational expenses. A well-maintained boiler also warrants fewer repairs, saving money in that regard.
3. Productivity and Uptime
Time is money in any industry, and breweries and distilleries are no exception. Boiler shutdowns can be costly for your facility, setting back brewing operations significantly.
Generally, pitted tubes and worn components require total replacements instead of repairs. You’d have to shut down your operations in the meantime, stifling your brewing processes and overall productivity. As servicing needs increase and efficiency decreases, revenue starts to take a hit.
An efficient workflow is essential to get quality beverages to your customers as quickly as possible. A functional steam boiler means your brewery can do different tasks with minimal interruption. Your business can see more productive operations and uptime with a reliable boiler.
4. Improved Product Quality
A steam boiler helps you complete different processes — like cleaning, lautering, fermentation and bottling — with higher precision and quality.
The more accurate these processes are, the better you can formulate optimal flavor, aroma and character combinations. Ultimately, you can deliver higher-quality products to your customers and give them a more positive tasting experience.
Essential Maintenance Measures for Steam Boilers in Breweries
After exploring the role of steam production and boiler systems in breweries, we can see how pivotal maintenance is. At Chardon Laboratories, we provide customized water treatment services for various industries, including breweries.
Our ISO-certified technicians can visit your facility, assess your boiler water needs and help you create a cost-effective treatment plan. Below are some strategies we use to control corrosion and scale formation in boilers.
1. Chemical Treatment
We use proprietary chemical solutions to treat boiler feedwater systems. These chemical additives stimulate a reaction that consumes scale-forming minerals, like calcium carbonate, silica, iron and magnesium.
Depending on your unique boiler system’s needs, we may also incorporate water softeners to remove these ions from the feedwater. To manage corrosion, we use sulfite to absorb the dissolved oxygen that often leads to pitting.
Here are some other solutions we use:
- Antifoaming agents: When dissolved solids rise to the surface, steam from the boiler can make them foam up. Excess foam can impede boiler performance and efficiency. We use antifoaming chemicals to adjust the water’s surface tension and manage foaming.
- pH neutralizers: If your boiler water’s pH levels are too low, the water becomes more acidic. Overly acidic boiler water can lead to corrosion and rust. Chardon Labs uses pH control chemicals to reduce acidity and protect your boiler from corrosion.
We also use multiple water treatment products like chemical pumps, boiler probes and contact headwater meters. This specialized equipment helps evenly distribute particulates and crystals. It keeps solids from settling and creating corrosion-causing insulating deposits.
2. Blowdown
We also implement blowdown, the process of intentionally draining feedwater from the boiler. It helps remove harmful solids and sediment that would otherwise settle at the bottom. We then replace the drained water with feedwater of a lower dissolved solid concentration.
By preventing the buildup of these impurities, boiler blowdown helps:
- Prevent corrosion and scaling.
- Maintain optimal cycles of concentration.
- Minimize the risk of overheating, as sludge buildup on heat transfer surfaces can increase metal temperature.
- Ensure more efficient steam production and a longer-lasting boiler.
Different factors can influence blowdown volume and frequency, such as makeup water quality and the amount of condensate returned to your steam boiler. As part of your water treatment program, Chardon can help you devise a consistent schedule so your steam boiler receives sufficient blowdown.
Choose Chardon for Your Boiler Water Treatment Needs
Make sure your brewery’s boiler receives the care, attention and maintenance it requires. Having served the water treatment industry since 1965, Chardon Labs has the expertise necessary to keep your boiler scale- and corrosion-free.
We have the same goal as you — keeping your brewery’s productivity up and costs down. We accomplish this through customized chemical treatments and ongoing maintenance at a guaranteed annual price.
Let us handle your steam boiler water treatment needs. That way, you can devote your energy to what matters most — crafting delicious brew for your customers. If you’d like to learn more about our boiler services or partner with us, contact a Chardon water treatment expert today.
