Hobbs Double Block and Bleed Valve installation – UK brewery

Published: 12th August 2019 | Issue 50 Share article:

Hobbs Valve recently supplied a number of large double block and bleed valves to a UK brewery. After the valves were installed, the brewery issued the following report highlighting how our product range has solved a number of issues they were previously experiencing:

“The brewery operates a high pressure hot water system at 13 bar / 160°C which circulates around the various production departments where it is utilised as the primary heating medium for brewing and pasteurisation.

The water is heated and pressurised in the Energy Centre using four 9 megawatt boilers and is circulated around the brewery by one of three pumps delivering 650 cubic metres an hour.

The existing single parallel slide type valves used to isolate the boilers and pumps were serviced every year which involved a total brewery shutdown for up to a week.

Also, these type of valves were not the ideal for safe means of isolation during normal operation to allow boilers to be inspected and pumps to be serviced.

In recent years, the brewery has been working towards safer isolation solutions for high risk liquids and gases utilised on site and across the business.

To provide such a solution, a decision was made to replace the existing single parallel slide valves with the Hobbs double block & bleed design which could be fitted with no pipework modifications.

Hobbs Valve provided the solution and manufactured double block and bleed valves to be fitted in place of the existing valves during an annual brewery shutdown.

The 20 valves installed ranged from 8″/200mm up to 14″/350mm bore sizes and included both an electrically actuated valve and manual valve in each unit, as well as a separate gauge connection and bleed line.

The electrically actuated valves were wired to a main control panel located externally to the Energy Centre where each valve could be operated remotely or all closed simultaneously in the event of a major leak.

As well as the safe isolation provided by the Hobbs valve installations, a degree of flexibility has been incorporated whereby the brewing and packaging sections of the system can be isolated totally independently of each other. This allows for separate shutdowns to be achieved thus negating the need for an annual shutdown of the brewery’s production every year.

There is a plan to extend the safe isolation with Hobbs double block and bleed valves to incorporate departmental isolation possibilities which will increase the flexibility to plan essential maintenance across the brewery independently from other production activities.”

This report highlights the importance of double block and bleed in today’s market.

We at Hobbs Valve pride ourselves on offering engineered solutions and this example demonstrates this perfectly.

Tel: 029 2086 1099
Email: sales@hobbsvalve.com
Web: www.hobbsvalve.co.uk

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