An independent brewery in West Sussex is poised to become the first in Britain to make its beer using an ultra-high-temperature heat pump in place of an oil boiler.
Hepworth Brewery expects to cut the emissions from wort boiling – an essential step in beer-making to extract flavour – by using a heat pump that can produce steam at a temperature of up to 130C.
The new heating system will recycle the waste vapour from the brewing process, which is normally vented into the air, by using the heat pump to raise the temperature of the steam back to 130C before returning it to the brewer.
The heat pump prototype, designed by a start-up based in south-west London, is expected to lower the brewer’s fuel costs by 40% and could soon be used to power the full brewing process, it said.
Andy Hepworth, the founder and chairman of Hepworth Brewery, said the government-backed project would enable the company to “switch off our oil boiler” in favour of the “reliable new way to recycle our waste heat”.
Heat pumps are expected to play a major role in the government’s ambition to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 in line with its legally binding climate targets. However, the technology has been slow to gain acceptance by householders wary about whether replacing a gas boiler with an electric heat pump could keep their homes warm.
The government hopes to encourage households to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by the end of the decade. Only 220,000 were installed last year.
The company behind the brewery’s new heat pump system, Futraheat, based in Surbiton, said the technology proves that heat pumps can play a role in cutting emissions from industrial processes as well as households.
Tom Taylor, the chief executive of Futraheat, said: “Heat is a major component of a huge range of industrial processes, from pharmaceuticals to food and drink, and vast amounts of this is delivered by steam.
“Until now, heat pumps have been both unaffordable and unable to deliver heat at the temperature that industry requires,” he addd. “This project demonstrates the technology can now be implemented within a brewery. We’re confident it can then be rolled out across a range of industries, in the UK and worldwide.”
