Smart Elbow® deflection elbow saves space, money and barley

November 17, 2014 by Miaja Cornelius

Space is often at a premium in commercial breweries. Raw ingredients, fermentation vessels, and other brewery equipment have large footprints. Engineers and plant managers are always looking at ways to maximize efficiencies without crowding out existing equipment and personnel.

Roy Marin, staff engineer at the Miller Brewing Co. plant in Fort Worth, Texas, found himself in just such a situation.

The plant’s grain upload system needed to be redesigned, and Marin needed to replace the existing automatic diverter with a piping panel. The new design required the installation of a manifold with a dozen 4-foot radius sweep elbows at the base of the grain silos. (Read the complete case study here.)

Existing sweep elbows and configuration of the automatic diverter caused nearly constant maintenance and housekeeping issues. The lines would plug, and the amount of wear was considerable.

Smart Elbow deflection elbows from Hammertek proved to be the ideal solution to Marin’s design challenges.

Hammertek’s compact and efficient design easily fit into the tighter quarters required, and the brewery observed considerably less degradation in the malted barley necessary in the production of beer.

Hammertek’s secret is the patented vortex design, which changes the direction of conveyed material in pneumatic and slurry systems while minimizing wear and virtually eliminating plugging and product degradation issues.

Maintaining the integrity of the barley hulls is especially important to brewers. Intact hulls function as a filtration medium during key parts of the brewing process, and Hammertek’s Smart Elbow deflection elbow kept the hulls of the barley kernels moving through the conveyor system without being shredded or damaged in any way.

Marin was so impressed with the performance and design features of the Smart Elbow products, he wanted Smart Elbow deflection elbows in Miller Brewing’s new piping panel layout. In the two years since the initial installation (a decision that saved Miller $30,000 in design and installation time alone!), the Hammertek Smart Elbow units installed have yet to experience a single issue or failure.