At Molson Breweries' Vancouver brewery, where Al Pedersen
is brewing supervisor, the Elima-Matic® Air Valve is eliminating
a lot of frustration.
Used in the fermenting process, the Elima-Matic helps Al recover
lager yeast from the bottom of 11,000 gallon bread loaf fermentation
tanks. Once beer is siphoned out, Al's crew climb into the
tanks and use Teflon® paddles to push the heavy yeast slurry
into the pump, which transfers it to a yeast storage tank
for reuse.
Before the Elima-Matic, the yeast collection process could
take an hour or more, depending on the thickness of the yeast
and whether the pump would stall or just slow. When the pump
stalled, as often as it did, the crew would have to climb
out of the tank and switch pumps, or wait inside while the
pump was replaced. Either way, says Al, "the stalling was
frustrating."
Today, the stalling and resulting frustration are history.
Since Molson installed Elima-Matic Air Double Diaphragm (AODD)
center sections into all of its yeast pumps, there have been
no stalls and a 50 percent to 75 percent drop in the amount
of time it takes to collect yeast. The average recovery time
is now 20 minutes.
"The Elima-Matic works great; no problems at all," says Al,
who has 14 years of experience in brewing at Molson. "It pumps
everything we ask it to pump."
Diaphragm Solutions
Molson began using the Elima-Matic technology in January 1996,
after Glen Monaghan of Industrial Pumps and Mixers, Inc.,
offered an E2 center section on a free trial basis. The E2
model is Versa-Matic's two-inch pump with the exclusive Elima-Matic
anti-stalling, non-icing, lubrication-free air valve system.
"The initial tests test didn't go well because we had premature
diaphragm failure," Glen says. "Then we went to the dome diaphragm,
which was a better fit with the competitive stainless steel
pump."
"Right away we noticed a big difference in what the pump would
pull," says Al. The consistency of yeast varies depending
on the type of yeast and amount of time allowed for cooling,
he explains. "The thicker the yeast, the harder it is to pump.
With the Elima-Matic, we were able to pull out all types of
yeast."
Today, all five of the yeast pumps at Molson's Vancouver brewery
feature Versa-Matic E2 center sections and Versa-Dome® diaphragms.
The pumps recover yeast from 42 fermenters at the Vancouver
facility, which produces 123,000 gallons of brew every day
for Molson, the largest brewer in Canada.
Reliability
and Speed
Prior to the yeast recovery, the Elima-Matics are also involved
in a cleaning-in-place process, which sterilizes the pumps
and lines that pull the yeast into storage tanks. "Since the
pumps work fast and don't stall when removing yeast, we have
more time to clean the frementation tanks for the next batch,"
Al says.
