Program Book - Master Brewers Association of the Americas

P-113
Visual recording of process control interfaces
HEINRICH JUNKER (1), Jens Voigt (2)
(1) ProLeiT International GmbH & Co. KG, Herzogenaurach,
Germany; (2) Technische Universität München, Center of Life
Sciences, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany
The automated process control of industrial or laboratory brewing
plants is normally performed by PLC and man/machine interfaces
on a personal computer. The visualization includes process graphics
and records the progress of controllers and indicators of parameters
like temperatures, controller settings and other technical values.
These systems usually lack visual information about human manual
interference. Fast changes in process are hard to watch. Simple
operations like valve opening or closing or motor switching and
operation times are often not recorded. In order to make it possible
to trace such situations in the event of malfunctions or process
deviations, a visual tool for the recording of process graphics,
pictures and controller profiles was developed. The requirement
defined with pilot plant users from TUM was to establish easily
accessible historical pictures of the real process. This must be
achieved including recording times of the product life cycle in order
to support back-tracking of products according to DIN, EAN, EU
and international standards. The system was set up in order to be
easily accessible from the on-line MMI, with a resolution time of 1
second which is then played in fast motion mode. The recordings are
performed via standard software on a common PC. The addition of
recorded process situations and data is a helpful tool in optimizing
process operations. It is also an ideal help in developing new process
recipes and test runs. Furthermore it can be used for operator
training.
Heinrich Junker received a M.S. degree in computer science and
joined the brewing industry in 1996 as a research scientist for process
control systems in breweries with the Huppmann Group. In 1997 he
founded the Huppmann/ProLeiT joint-venture company brewmaxx
Ltd. and moved to ProLeiT headquarters in Herzogenaurach,
Germany. Since 2003 Heinrich has been managing director of
brewmaxx Ltd., which is now 100% owned by ProLeiT AG and was
renamed ProLeiT International Ltd. in 2007.
122
P-114
Decentralized easy-to-use wastewater treatment plants for the
future
ANDREAS KASPRZYK (1), Judith Forstner (1), Christian
Luschmann (1), Rainer Benning (1), Antonio Degado (1)
(1) Institute of Fluid Mechanics of the University Erlangen
Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany
The motivation of the project is the worldwide growing demand
for water and the existing restrictions in access and water quality,
which will drastically increase in the future due to worldwide
developments. Additionally, in many areas the transport of fresh
and used water causes high logistic efforts and energy consumption.
This is dealt with through the development of decentralized plants
that can be installed in units like sky scrapers, universities or factory
premises. These plants are designed to produce service water
that can be used for flushing or irrigation. For this purpose the
application of anaerobic technology suffices and, furthermore, leads
to a lower amount of sludge while produced biogas can be used to
save energy. Wastewater treatment is basically realized by a two step
process, where hydrolysis and acidogenesis are carried out in one
reactor, acetogenesis and methanogenesis in a second. In addition to
this classic approach a third step takes care of the ammonium load of
the processed water. A major disadvantage of anaerobic plants lies in
their sensitivity to overloading which may cause process failure. The
following start up of the plant needs, dependent on the size, several
weeks up to a few months. In a former study it was shown that this
failure can be avoided by appropriate automation, which is also
necessary for another reason. The idea of a decentralized approach
leads to a high number of plants, which requires a sufficient number
of operators. As it is not probable that enough experts in wastewater
treatment can be found for this purpose, the plant will be equipped
with a sophisticated automation system, based upon cognitive
hybrids. Artificial neural networks are designed to extract hidden
information from the sensor data. This not only gives refined
knowledge of the actual plant’s state, it will also be used to replace
expensive sensors with cheap and robust ones. A further part of
the automation system is represented by fuzzy logic, which allows
the integration of expert knowledge into the algorithms. With this
approach experience and knowledge can implicitly be supplied to
the operator of the plant. Consequently, it is intended to enable
caretakers, house owners or other people with similar knowledge to
operate the plants and handle all events during normal operation.
To guarantee suitable response to more severe problems, a remote
maintenance system will be developed that enables a control center
to supervise the plant state and take appropriate action to restore
normal plant operation.
From 1994 to 1997 Andreas Kasprzyk apprenticed as a brewer
and maltster at the Paulaner Brewery GmbH & Co KG in Munich.
Afterward he was employed at the Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu
GmbH as a brewer. In 2001 he began his studies on brewing and
beverage technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM)
in Weihenstephan. He completed his Dipl.-Ing. (Univ.) degree in
2006. After graduation he began employment with Versuchs- und
Lehranstalt für Brauerei in Berlin e. V. as a scientific assistant at the
Research Institute for Engineering and Packaging (FMV). In 2007
he moved to the University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), Institute
for Fluid Mechanics (LSTM). There he is working on a Ph.D. on
“Damage Detection of Returnable Goods” in the group process
automation of flows in bio- and medical technology.