Having trouble with High CO2 consumption in bottling line.What is the average per HL

[Bernysbeer]

Anyone has an idea on what's the average of CO2 used in a regularbottling line? we currently use around 5.5 lbs per HL.
Tips on where can i reduce this?

[Canuckistan]

A bit more info on the type of bottling line and bottles would help. Have you eliminated leaks etc. before the line?

[dfalken]

Bottling line details

The bottling line is a 100 bpm 24 head rotary tri-block with double pre-evacuation. What CO2 usage per BBL are some of you experiencing in packaging?

[TGTimm]

We run a GAI 3003A Bier with a double-evac system, at about half the speed you indicate (why the secrecy about the bottler?). For 50 bbl of bottling, we generally use somewhere between 200 and 250 lb of CO2.

When the techs from Prospero originally set our machine up, they had the bottle dryer on the rinser using CO2. It used over 500 lb CO2/ 50bbl run. Our CO2 consumption dropped to less than half of that when I re-plumbed the rinser to use dry, filtered air.

[dfalken]

Thanks for the response. No secrecy on the filler, it is made by HyFilling (you are probably at the same place you were when there was secrecy right? lol ) Chinese filler and we are actually quite happy with it so far. We've had to modify a thing here and there and chance some of the o-rings but beyond that it's doing its job quite well and we had it up an running in under a month and less than a month later we already have our losses to around 3% and we have lots more room for improvement.

I guess our numbers are not that far off from where you are at. I think however that we can improve our consumption. During the double evac cycle, the machine leaves the vacuum valve open the entire time so during the first evac it is suctioning at the same time that CO2 is flowing into the bottle. Probably leads to slightly better airs but at CO2 expense and given that CO2 around here is INSANELY expensive ($0.72 /lb) we need to minimize its consumption as much as possible. I think the fix is easy we just need to cut a groove in the rail that opens the vacuum valve during the CO2 purge in between the two evacs. This will allow the valve to close while the first CO2 rinse is taking place.

I am amazed that GAI would be wasting CO2 like you described!

[TGTimm]

OK... HyFilling!

The change you want to make to the CO2 cam sounds like the way to go. It's the way the GAI is set up--the CO2 is off while the evac cycle is going on.

3% loss is great. It took us years to get down to the loss level we're at, which, on an ideal day, is one case at the beginning, one at the end. Our low-fill based local economy has crashed--I have to grab a case as quickly as possible or it's gone!

I wish I could figure out how to get our CO2 consumption even lower than it is now. CO2 isn't cheap here, either (I don't know just what we're paying)--in fact, it's about our fourth highest cost for our packaged beer.

One suggestion for your imported bottling line (ours is also imported, just from the other side of the world)--parts may be hard to get, and take a while to ship (some parts for the GAI can take months to get here from Italy, where a guy sits at a little bench with a file, hacksaw, and bottle of wine, making each part by hand). Take a careful look at your machine, and assume that anything that can break will. If it's something you can fabricate or buy locally, great. If it isn't you'd best have a spare, especially if it's a critical part you can't run without. The alternative is being shut down for a long time. I keep about $10,000 worth of spares, and I replace any I use.

One thing that can save you some bucks is o-rings. If your machine is anything like ours, it eats rubber. I was shocked to find that we were spending $1.00 each for o-rings from the distributor. I sent out samples of all the o-rings we use, and got quotes from several suppliers. I finally settled on Chinook O-ring, out of Beaverton, OR. I'm now paying a tiny fraction of what we used to pay.

[dfalken]

OK... HyFilling!

The change you want to make to the CO2 cam sounds like the way to go. It's the way the GAI is set up--the CO2 is off while the evac cycle is going on.

3% loss is great. It took us years to get down to the loss level we're at, which, on an ideal day, is one case at the beginning, one at the end. Our low-fill based local economy has crashed--I have to grab a case as quickly as possible or it's gone!

I wish I could figure out how to get our CO2 consumption even lower than it is now. CO2 isn't cheap here, either (I don't know just what we're paying)--in fact, it's about our fourth highest cost for our packaged beer.

One suggestion for your imported bottling line (ours is also imported, just from the other side of the world)--parts may be hard to get, and take a while to ship (some parts for the GAI can take months to get here from Italy, where a guy sits at a little bench with a file, hacksaw, and bottle of wine, making each part by hand). Take a careful look at your machine, and assume that anything that can break will. If it's something you can fabricate or buy locally, great. If it isn't you'd best have a spare, especially if it's a critical part you can't run without. The alternative is being shut down for a long time. I keep about $10,000 worth of spares, and I replace any I use.

One thing that can save you some bucks is o-rings. If your machine is anything like ours, it eats rubber. I was shocked to find that we were spending $1.00 each for o-rings from the distributor. I sent out samples of all the o-rings we use, and got quotes from several suppliers. I finally settled on Chinook O-ring, out of Beaverton, OR. I'm now paying a tiny fraction of what we used to pay.

Thanks for the advice. Our is already going through o-rings especially considering it came with crappy chinese o-rings. We are already changing all of them for better quality ones but we are paying just over a buck a pop so I will have to check out your recommended provider. In any case I am quite pleased with the results we've had so far although we haven't purchased the DO meter yet, which will be the real test. Evac seems to be working fine and we have the pinger finally working fine so I think we should be ok on the DO front but we'll see.

[TGTimm]

I chose Chinook O-ring for low cost, but also because he has a small minimum order. Lots of O-ring suppliers have minimum orders in the hundreds or thousands, and, while I probably will eventually use all those rings, I don't have the space to store them. The fact that Chinook is relatively local to us makes for fast shipping when I need it.

[sopbeer]

o rings

Check out hyrapack in salt lake. If they don't have it they can probable make it. We where able to source 99% of our gaskets and rings from them.