Palletised Cask Filling System

The system will fill six casks, which are upright on a pallet, simultaneously. Two classes of cask will be filled; ASB (American Standard Barrel) and Hogshead. Dimensions and volume ranges for both can be seen in here.

 

All throughput calculations will be carried out assuming all casks are hogsheads.

 

The casks will be filled by a lance or nozzle inserted through a tapered circular bunghole in the approximate centre of the cask end. The bunghole has a minimum diameter of 50mm ± 5%.

 

Each cask must be filled with the maximum volume of spirit possible; the air gap between the inner surface of the cask end and the final spirit fill level cannot exceed 40mm. The spirit is filled at 68.5% abv (alcohol by volume).

 

The system will be manually operated. The nozzle insertion and the commencement of the fill process will be carried out by an operator; the fill control, fill completion and nozzle extraction must be automatic.

 

The filling will be controlled using a DCS (distributed control system); Siemens PSC 7 processors, input and output modules will be used throughout the FSDU (Fillng Store and Disgorging Unit).  

 

The process time must be minimised but maximising fill level takes priority over process time provided that the maximum cycle period is not exceeded. The maximum cycle period is determined by the annual throughput.

 

The FSDU will fill 70,000,000 litres (70,000m^3) of pure alcohol of alcohol per annum. The spirit will be filled at 68.5% abv; this requires 102,000,000 litres (102,000m^3) bulk spirit to be filled. Bulk spirit volume is calculated by dividing the required pure alcohol volume by the bulk spirit strength; i.e. 70,000,000 ÷ 0.685 = 102,000,000.

 

The plant must be capable of achieving this output while operating with an OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of 75%. This increases the design filling capacity to 136,200,000 litres (136,200m^3) annually. The plant will consist of two process lines, each with a palletised cask filling system each system must be capable of handling 60% of the total annual output. The FSDU will operate on a single shift basis: 38 hours per week for 50 weeks of the year. Therefore each system must be designed to achieve a minimum average filling flow rate of 11.95 litres per second. This equates to a 126 second maximum cycle period. 60 seconds is to be allowed for the positioning of the lances and bunging of the casks after filling by an operator and the conveying of the pallets to and from the filling position. This leaves a maximum fill time of 66 seconds.

 

Spirit flow within any pipe work cannot exceed 7m/s to prevent the build-up of static electricity.The volume of spirit filled into each cask must be measured precisely in order to record the volume of pure alcohol filled to a logging database in line with HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) requirements [2].