Cross-flow lees filter experience delivers efficiency at Yalumba

Cross-flow lees filter experience delivers efficiency and economy at Yalumba

Recovery of wine from lees represents one of the most challenging forms of filtration faced by wineries. The high concentration and variability of the suspended solids limit the suitable filtration technologies, while strict environmental regulations and sustainability programs are increasing pressure to reduce waste volumes.

 

Traditionally, lees filtration is performed with filter aid based systems like rotary vacuum drum (RVD) or chamber press filters. While these systems typically have good volumetric recovery of the wine from the solids, there are some inherent drawbacks that can affect wine quality. The open design allows for oxygen pick-up and the recovered wine often needs further processing. The wine is typically downgraded in value and used in blends instead of added back to the original batch. The classical technologies also require large volumes of diatomaceous earth (DE) or perlite filter aids.

 

This increases the winery waste, disposal, labour, and wine losses; all factors contributing to high operating costs. To overcome the limitations of the existing filter aid-based lees systems, The Yalumba Wine Company was one of the first wineries to adopt the latest development in cross-flow filtration. The new technology utilises the same hollow fibre membranes proven in wine clarification applications over the past decade, however, for lees processing the hollow fibres have a wider inner diameter so that they can process higher solids. With implementation of Pall’s Oenoflow™ HS system, the Barossa Valley winery can recover higher quality wine from lees more efficiently and economically.

 

Why change?

The Yalumba Wine Company has been exploring options to remove earth filtration from its winemaking processes. In the past six years, Yalumba has managed to remove all DE filtration and, now with the incorporation of Pall’s Oenoflow HS system, it has been able to further reduce its reliance on perlite filtration for wine lees.

 

In its strive for sustainability, Yalumba approached this objective holistically, ensuring that the move was advantageous for all areas of the business including wine quality, the environment, operational efficiency, occupational health and safety, as well as financially. The change reflects Yalumba’s winemaking philosophy, says head of winemaking Louisa Rose. “Some years ago the Yalumba winemaking team set themselves a goal to eliminate diatomaceous earth, and similar media from the winery processes,” Rose said.

 

The goal, she says, was important for a number of reasons:

 

  • environmental issues are always at top of mind, and earth usage from both an input and waste point of view was never ideal
  • the cost of earth and other filter media such as lenticular cartridges was a large part of the company’s consumables’ budget
  • perhaps most importantly, Rose says they believed that using the associated filtration technologies significantly reduced the quality of its wines, stripping or absorbing flavour and texture into the media.

 

“At Yalumba we have a strong minimalist additive philosophy, and use almost no fining agents in our winemaking; earth just didn’t fit this model,” she said. “Cross-flow filters have enabled this goal to be realised, and the high solids lees crossflow filter has been the icing on the cake. “No longer do premium quality lees and juice bottoms end up at the bottom of the quality chain. The quality in many cases is almost as good as the clear wine, and they are often recoverable back into the product they came from, or similar.”

 

Project implementation

Yalumba operates two wineries in the Barossa Valley, The Yalumba Winery at Angaston, and the Oxford Landing Winery in Nuriootpa. Yalumba installed the Oenoflow HS system to process lees from both sites. During vintage, the system is used at the Angaston winery, where it processes coldsettled white juice bottoms, as well as any lees that are available to be processed. Once the majority of white juice bottoms have been processed, the filter is then relocated to the Oxford Landing Winery, where it continues to process the lees from both sites. By relocating the unit, the transport volumes from each site are minimised while maximising the availability of the unit.

 

Between April and June 2010 as compared to the previous year with the RVD filter, with implementation of the new wide-bore hollow fibre system, Yalumba was able to eliminate the purchase of 30 tonne of perlite for lees processing and reduce their solid waste of “spent earth” volume by 175t. Considerable improvements in filtrate quality and consistency have also been realised. In the past with the RVD, recovered white wine turbidity generally ranged from 10-50 nephelometric turbidity unit (NTU), while red wines had higher turbidity and frequent wine solids carry-over. Yalumba had seen some red wines post-RVD filter with turbidity in excess of 800 NTU. With the Oenoflow HS system, recovered wine turbidity is consistently less than 1 NTU.

Recovering wine at a higher value

Economically, the greatest benefit realised with the high solids cross-flow filter is the reclaiming of wine from the lees back into the original product. Instead of being downgraded, the recovered wine is at the bottling specification for turbidity and micro-organism level. This means that from a processing point of view, it will not have any negative effects when added back to the original batch. Oxford Landing winemaker Matt Pick described the addition of the lees recovered material as “adding complexity and texture from yeast derived characters back into the wine”. Between April and August 2010, the Yalumba Angaston site recovered 108 kilolitres of wine from lees with a total value $168,000 higher than would have been obtained by RVD filtration, because of the higher quality of the cross-flow filtered wine.

 

Operational advantage

The Oenoflow HS system is fully automated, allowing the solids concentration within the system to be accurately controlled to achieve long run times. On some batches of white wine fermentation lees, by automatically controlling the bleed, the filter operated in a steady state condition, with no degradation to flow or change in the solids concentration, enabling run times of over 48 hours, limited only by the volume of material to process. The combination of the cleaning system and flow-path on the filter removes the fear of irreversible blockage of the fibres. The flow through each module is from the bottom up facilitating an easy discharge of solids at the end of each batch. This enables the filter to handle wine solids and bentonite to high concentrations without difficulty.

 

The filter has also been used for standard post-fermentation and racking cellar filtration at the Oxford Landing Winery, expanding the filtration capacity of the site. The filter is able to operate unmanned over weekends as it is connected to the site’s SCADA system for remote monitoring. This enables an additional 35% operation time during the weeks when it is utilised. Additionally by using the system for filtration prior to the bottling membranes, Yalumba has reduced the number of lenticular housings and consumable cartridges required for pre-bottling filtration.

 

Environment and safety

Environmental impact and employee safety are both vital considerations for The Yalumba Wine Company. Rose says the complete removal of earth filtration from its winemaking process was a threeprong approach, as it supported quality, environmental and safety concerns simultaneously. Yalumba had already shifted completely from DE use, eliminating it through use of cross-flow membrane technology for all general cellar clarification. The RDV filters, however, still used perlite, and while being less hazardous from a safety point of view, it must be controlled tightly through the HACCP and wine processing aids approval system. Respiratory protective equipment is required for operators handling the perlite.

 

There is also a significant environmental impact, as the perlite must be mined and then appropriately disposed. The Oenoflow HS system eliminates the need for personal protective equipment for the lees process. There is no dust, which upon inhalation can lead to respiratory issues. Also, when chemically cleaning with the automated cross-flow system, the operator can select the appropriate cleaning cycle and then leave the area. For chemically cleaning the RDV filter, the operator needs to be present.

 

Summary

Yalumba cellar surpervisor and lees crossflow trainer Rob Bondfield says the new filter has delivered welcomed changes. “After spending some time running the Oenoflow lees filter and learning what to look out for regarding solids percentage, varying flow rates, pressure differentials, etc, I believe it’s made a huge difference to our quality and efficiency of lees filtration,” he said. “We no longer have to downgrade our lees filtrate because what we are filtering is of the same quality as the free run.

 

We also don’t have the problem of using perlite or DE on the rotary drum and having to dispose of the waste. “The other advantage we have found is that the NTU coming out of the crossflow filter is 0.2-0.4 which has vastly improved our final filtration. Bondfield also praised the user-friendly aspect of the units touch screen and navigation tools.

 

“Purchasing this filter has improved all areas of our lees recovery which, in turn, can only assist in making better wines for our company.” While Yalumba will continue to work on increasing the proportion of solids in the retentate and the filtrate recovery, they are at the forefront of innovation with an application that has sustainable benefits for so many parts of the business, improving wine quality, reducing environmental impact, providing a safer work environment, all while improving the financial recovery of wine lees products.

TFF Technology Increases Yield and Reduces Waste Streams

Up to 80% of the extract contained in the surplus yeast that collects at the bottom of tanks after fermentation and maturation can now be recovered rather than disposed of. Beer can be recovered and blended back into the brewing process at a ratio of up to 5% without negatively influencing the beer quality, increasing the yield and reducing the total beer volume needing to be produced. This represents a lower CO2 footprint, reduced water usage, and a lowering of production costs, plus the minimized waste stream reduces disposal costs and ensures a lower level of BOD’s and COD’s are returned back into the environment.
Up to 80% of the extract contained in the surplus yeast that collects at the bottom of tanks after fermentation and maturation can now be recovered rather than disposed of. Beer can be recovered and blended back into the brewing process at a ratio of up to 5% without negatively influencing the beer quality, increasing the yield and reducing the total beer volume needing to be produced. This represents a lower CO2 footprint, reduced water usage, and a lowering of production costs, plus the minimized waste stream reduces disposal costs and ensures a lower level of BOD’s and COD’s are returned back into the environment.
詳細を見る

Craft Brewery Preserves Image and Limits Losses

Although beer is restrictive to bacterial growth due to its low pH, ethanol concentration, and low oxygen content, the presence of certain beer spoilage bacteria including Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Pectinatus, and Megasphaera can generate off-flavors, turbidity and acidity. Such quality deficiencies render the product unacceptable and often result in high economic losses and negative brand image. Throughout the production process, undesirable microbial contamination must be prevented to achieve the required final beer quality. Such contamination may originate from ingredients (including yeast), air and water utilities coming into contact with the product, and the environment.
Although beer is restrictive to bacterial growth due to its low pH, ethanol concentration, and low oxygen content, the presence of certain beer spoilage bacteria including Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, Pectinatus, and Megasphaera can generate off-flavors, turbidity and acidity. Such quality deficiencies render the product unacceptable and often result in high economic losses and negative brand image. Throughout the production process, undesirable microbial contamination must be prevented to achieve the required final beer quality. Such contamination may originate from ingredients (including yeast), air and water utilities coming into contact with the product, and the environment.
詳細を見る

Pall Aria™ System Rescues Bottled Spring Water Producer from Plant Closure

Spring water is a valuable natural resource, which requires good purification treatment before appearing on grocery store shelves as high purity, visually pleasing bottled product. Filtration is a key process step required to achieve consistently high product quality. The costs associated with filtration may be substantial, depending on source water quality. Disposable filters are a technically sound solution but their use may become economically unsustainable in the face of difficult or variable quality source water.
Spring water is a valuable natural resource, which requires good purification treatment before appearing on grocery store shelves as high purity, visually pleasing bottled product. Filtration is a key process step required to achieve consistently high product quality. The costs associated with filtration may be substantial, depending on source water quality. Disposable filters are a technically sound solution but their use may become economically unsustainable in the face of difficult or variable quality source water.
詳細を見る

Microflow System Offers 10 Months Payback in Cheese Brine Purification

Salting by immersion in brine is used for many varieties of cheese worldwide. During repeated immersions fat, curd particles and microorganisms from the cheese plus the accumulation of proteins and other components builds up a nutrient-rich environment for the salt resistant microorganisms. Reused brine may then become a reservoir of unwanted microorganisms, such as gas- or pigmentproducing bacteria, yeast and mold, or salt resistant pathogens, cross-contaminating the cheese and impacting their quality. Good control of the brine and the brining operation is essential to ensure consistent daily production. Additionally, brine disposal is coming under increasing focus. High disposal costs or volume limitations in specific areas are driving the demand for greater brine reuse, to generate operating cost savings and minimize the plant environmental footprint.
Salting by immersion in brine is used for many varieties of cheese worldwide. During repeated immersions fat, curd particles and microorganisms from the cheese plus the accumulation of proteins and other components builds up a nutrient-rich environment for the salt resistant microorganisms. Reused brine may then become a reservoir of unwanted microorganisms, such as gas- or pigmentproducing bacteria, yeast and mold, or salt resistant pathogens, cross-contaminating the cheese and impacting their quality. Good control of the brine and the brining operation is essential to ensure consistent daily production. Additionally, brine disposal is coming under increasing focus. High disposal costs or volume limitations in specific areas are driving the demand for greater brine reuse, to generate operating cost savings and minimize the plant environmental footprint.
詳細を見る

Distillers Improve Quality While Reducing Operating Costs with SUPRApak™ Technology

Filtration of spirits can be a challenging task. It is essential to remove contaminants that may cause turbidity while retaining the quality enhancing components in the product. Filter sheets are the traditional method for achieving this delicate balance. Sheets are comprised of a unique matrix of materials that provide an excellent combination of adsorption and depth filtration, making them an ideal solution for turbidity reduction and haze removal in spirits. Filter sheets are available in multiple grades to cover a wide range of applications from filtration of cordials to chill haze reduction in brown spirits to particle removal in white spirits. Additionally many plate and frame filter units have the flexibility to add or remove sheets to suit the batch size, flow rate or the specific product to be filtered.
Filtration of spirits can be a challenging task. It is essential to remove contaminants that may cause turbidity while retaining the quality enhancing components in the product. Filter sheets are the traditional method for achieving this delicate balance. Sheets are comprised of a unique matrix of materials that provide an excellent combination of adsorption and depth filtration, making them an ideal solution for turbidity reduction and haze removal in spirits. Filter sheets are available in multiple grades to cover a wide range of applications from filtration of cordials to chill haze reduction in brown spirits to particle removal in white spirits. Additionally many plate and frame filter units have the flexibility to add or remove sheets to suit the batch size, flow rate or the specific product to be filtered.
詳細を見る

Fermentation Broth Clarification Systems for Food and Feed Ingredients Manufacturing

Producers of bulk food and feed ingredients such as amino acids, organic acids, and vitamins use fermentation as the basis of their production. Today’s modern industrial biotechnology processes use carefully selected and purified microbial cell cultures to produce an ever-increasing variety of ingredients and increase productivity. During fermentation, the microorganisms multiply in industrial bioreactors, utilizing a carbohydrate source for energy. The course of microbial growth progresses under well-controlled conditions of aeration, agitation rate, temperature, pH and other parameters. Fermentation can last from a few hours to several days. The metabolic end products produced by the microorganisms are the basis for many ingredients used today.
Producers of bulk food and feed ingredients such as amino acids, organic acids, and vitamins use fermentation as the basis of their production. Today’s modern industrial biotechnology processes use carefully selected and purified microbial cell cultures to produce an ever-increasing variety of ingredients and increase productivity. During fermentation, the microorganisms multiply in industrial bioreactors, utilizing a carbohydrate source for energy. The course of microbial growth progresses under well-controlled conditions of aeration, agitation rate, temperature, pH and other parameters. Fermentation can last from a few hours to several days. The metabolic end products produced by the microorganisms are the basis for many ingredients used today.
詳細を見る

Cider Producer Maximizes Yield and Increases Capacity with the Oenoflow™ HS System

Filtration is a key operation in modern cider production to deliver visually bright and shelf stable product. Traditionally, cider clarification has been performed with diatomaceous earth or sheet based filtration technologies. However, with more favorable economics, easier operation and lower waste volumes, crossflow filtration systems like Pall’s Oenoflow XL system have become more widely adopted over the past decade.
Filtration is a key operation in modern cider production to deliver visually bright and shelf stable product. Traditionally, cider clarification has been performed with diatomaceous earth or sheet based filtration technologies. However, with more favorable economics, easier operation and lower waste volumes, crossflow filtration systems like Pall’s Oenoflow XL system have become more widely adopted over the past decade.
詳細を見る

TAB Filtration Significantly Improves Ready to Drink Tea Quality and Yield

Ready to drink tea, fruit juices and drinks, carbonated soft drinks, and other beverages are subject to spoilage due to the presence of heatresistant, acidophilic bacterial spores (TAB). The thermoacidophilic spores may originate either from exposure to agricultural raw materials such as in fruit juice production, or from contamination in the beverage ingredients, such as sweeteners, juice and tea concentrates, or flavors, essences, and colors from natural extracts.
Ready to drink tea, fruit juices and drinks, carbonated soft drinks, and other beverages are subject to spoilage due to the presence of heatresistant, acidophilic bacterial spores (TAB). The thermoacidophilic spores may originate either from exposure to agricultural raw materials such as in fruit juice production, or from contamination in the beverage ingredients, such as sweeteners, juice and tea concentrates, or flavors, essences, and colors from natural extracts.
詳細を見る

Cross-flow Lees Filter Experience Delivers Efficiency and Economy at Yalumba

Recovery of wine from lees represents one of the most challenging forms of filtration faced by wineries. The high concentration and variability of the suspended solids limit the suitable filtration technologies, while strict environmental regulations and sustainability programs are increasing pressure to reduce waste volumes. Traditionally, lees filtration is performed with filter aid based systems like rotary vacuum drum (RVD) or chamber press filters. While these systems typically have good volumetric recovery of the wine from the solids, there are some inherent drawbacks that can affect wine quality. The open design allows for oxygen pick-up and the recovered wine often needs further processing. The wine is typically downgraded in value and used in blends instead of added back to the original batch.
Recovery of wine from lees represents one of the most challenging forms of filtration faced by wineries. The high concentration and variability of the suspended solids limit the suitable filtration technologies, while strict environmental regulations and sustainability programs are increasing pressure to reduce waste volumes. Traditionally, lees filtration is performed with filter aid based systems like rotary vacuum drum (RVD) or chamber press filters. While these systems typically have good volumetric recovery of the wine from the solids, there are some inherent drawbacks that can affect wine quality. The open design allows for oxygen pick-up and the recovered wine often needs further processing. The wine is typically downgraded in value and used in blends instead of added back to the original batch.
詳細を見る