So far, the brewery in Porto has cut 18% off its total energy consumption – which equals an annual CO2 reduction of 3,400 tonnes. The project pay-back time has been two years, so the savings achieved during the past year amounted to a profit for Unicer.
At Unicer’s other brewery plant, in Santarém, they are also working on reducing the energy consumption and experience similar results.
Pedro Moreira da Silva, Production Director at Unicer, says: “When we cut our energy consumption, we also cut our costs and that makes us more competitive in a market with price wars and tough struggles for market shares. Danfoss and Unicer have been working as a team to obtain these good results. Danfoss has contributed with expert knowledge within energy optimisation and helped us focus on our consumption and savings. Previously people did not have their mind set on whether the lights were on or off. Now we talk about energy consumption on a daily basis and how to reduce it.”
Focus on energy savings and new solutions
The results at the breweries have been achieved by increasing the energy awareness and implementing new systems and technical solutions.
In Porto some of the biggest single savings have been obtained through improved control of the steam consumption during beer boiling, reuse of excess heat from other processes for the cleaning, and optimisation of the refrigeration system using VLT® frequency converters, among other things.
Vasco Carvalho, in charge of energy and maintenance at the brewery, explains: “We obtained a major and quick saving by improving the control of the refrigeration system and installing 25 frequency converters which regulate the pumps and ventilators so they are operating with low energy consumption. However, our biggest gain is that the entire brewery is now focusing on energy savings. Using a new software system from Danfoss, we prepare energy data reports every week and follow up on them. This is not just a project – it has become an integral part of our daily work.”
Partnership continues
The next phase of the partnership between Danfoss Solutions and Unicer will involve running an EnSave® project at the company’s four mineral water plants, which is set to begin immediately. With this in place, all of Unicer’s major production sites will be systematically reducing their energy consumption.
Danfoss’ energy optimisation concept directed at industrial companies is called EnSave® and includes analyses of the energy consumption, improvement planning, training and implementation. Read more about the concept using the link below.
Picture to the right: Vasco Carvalho from the brewery in Porto checks the frequency converters that have contributed to the energy savings.