Membrane technology experts in Oelde

This year’s members’ meeting of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Membrantechnik (German Society of Membrane Technology) was held at the beginning of February in Oelde at the invitation of GEA Westfalia Separator. As a neutral mediator between users of membrane processes and membrane technology specialists, the association arranges contacts between potential users of membrane technology and qualified specialists; providing literature and sector information, initiating and supporting research and development activities, seminar organisation, training and trade events and support of the presence of membrane companies at exhibitions, to mention just a few of the society’s tasks.

Since 1988, the Oelde-based centrifuge specialist GEA Westfalia Separator has been working intensively with membrane filtration, considering the combination of centrifugal separation and membranes being a seminal solution for many areas of application. The best example in this respect is the patented PROFI^® process for beer filtration which was introduced in 2003 and which has since demonstrated its impact as a “dust-free” alternative in practical applications in Germany, Denmark, the USA, Eastern Europe, Japan as well as Australia and New Zealand.

After all items on the agenda had been successfully discussed, the members withdrew to Oelde’s Pott’s brewery in order to visit and inspect the brewery and with it the cross-flow filtration installation of the PROFI^® series of GEA Westfalia Separator.

Following the guided tour, Wolf-Dietrich Herberg, Product Manager for Membrane Filtration of the Business Line Beverage Technology at GEA Westfalia Separator, presented the areas of application for separators, decanters and ceramic membranes for beverage application. In order to round off its product portfolio, GEA Westfalia Separator acquired Membraflow GmbH in Southern Germany several years ago. Membraflow manufactures ceramic micro- and ultra-filtration membranes as well as complete installations for various industries. Fruit juices, vegetable and citrus juices, wine and sparkling wine, coffee, tea and soya milk and of course beer – they all would be virtually inconceivable without the use of centrifuges and membrane filtration. There is a wide range of potential applications in breweries for separating technology from Oelde. For instance, separators are used for clarifying the hot wort, the trub wort, the cold wort as well as the green beer. In addition, they clarify the beer upstream of the filtration process in order to extend the filter operating lives. There are also special areas of application, such as interrupted fermentation for making non-alcoholic beer, adjusting the turbidity level of wheat beers and kvas clarification. In the field of beer recovery, the specific conditions in every brewery determine which of the three separating systems - separator, decanter or ceramic membrane filter - is ideally used. As the only supplier of all three alternatives, GEA Westfalia Separator is able to provide neutral support and advise the appropriate recommendation for every operation. In the PROFI^® system, the separator and membrane system are combined, thus replacing the “old” kieselguhr filtration.

The PROFI^® process for beer filtration, the development and introduction of the process, was the subject of the second speech of the day, presented by Hans Denniger, Product Manager for beer in the Business Line Beverage Technology of GEA Westfalia Separator, and co-developer of PROFI^®. A major advantage of this combination of separator and membrane system is that the entire kieselguhr handling is no longer necessary. In addition, the filtration result is extremely reliable; the system can switch over to other beer types very quickly and without involving large quantities of mixed beer, process times are shorter and cellar capacity can be increased without any additional investment. Since 2003, Pott’s brewery in Oelde has been filtering beer exclusively with PROFI^®; the installation was inspected by the experts during the guided tour. In 2005, the Carlsberg Group was the first brewing Group with world-wide operations to decide to use the system; PROFI^® is now being used on all continents, and there is no doubt that it will supersede kieselguhr filtration across a broad front.

With this program, in the unanimous opinion of the guests of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Membrantechnik, GEA Westfalia Separator held a very successful and extremely informative event, and there were lengthy discussions concerning the wide range of impressions during the subsequent informal part of the meeting.