In wineries, as well as in all areas of food processing and storage, there is a growing demand to monitor and make the cooling system more efficient by knowing its thermal energy consumption, in order to obtain maximum production and reduce costs. ISOIL Industria provides the suitable instrumentation for calculating the thermal energy of the chillers and cooling systems used in the winemaking process and provides operators with qualified technical support.
Wine production: Italian leadership and the sector challenges
For the third consecutive year, Italy is confirmed as the leading wine producer in the world: 18.5% of the wine produced globally comes from this country.
The survey on the national wine sector recently published by the Mediobanca Research Area reveals that in 2021 over 50 million hectoliters were produced (+ 2% on 2020), 22.2 million hectoliters were exported (+7 , 3% on 2020) for a turnover of 7.1 billion euros and for 2022 a growth of 4.8% in turnover is expected, which could reach 5.6% for exports.
In order to successfully face the new challenges of the sector (including the greater needs of sustainability, macroeconomic changes, the increase in the price of raw materials …) and continue to be competitive at an international level, the wine industry must be able to make production processes more and more efficient, sustainable and quality, reducing energy consumption and related costs: these objectives can be achieved by improving processes with the installation of innovative measurement technologies.
Making processes more efficient with thermal energy meters
Wineries can be defined as energy-intensive: the energy consumption for the production of wine in the European Union amounts to 1,750 million kWh per year and in Italy it is approximately 500 million kWh/year (according to data from Tesla – Transferring Energy Save Laid on Agroindustry).
Water heating for bottle washing, bottling, lighting, pasteurization, air conditioning of the premises require large amounts of energy, but more than half of the energy consumed by wineries is used to operate the systems cooling during fermentation, stabilization, and aging (processes that must take place at a controlled temperature and and which take times that greatly affect the quality of the wine).
Technologies for the measurement of thermal energy and flow allow to identify the consumption of the different processing phases and to monitor the efficiency of the cooling systems.
A wide range of solutions by ISOIL Industria
ISOIL Industria provides a wide range of measuring instruments suitable to meet the needs of wineries, which change according to the type of wine produced, the size, and technologies already installed. Here are some:
To measure the fluid temperature and adjust the flow rate based on the process temperature in cooling systems for machine tools and similar, the compact electromagnetic flow meter CS3900 is the ideal solution.
The ISOMAG CS3795 compact insertion flowmeter without indicator is also available and both models integrate sensor and converter in the same body.
Among the thermal energy meters, the MV311 ISONRG calculator satisfies the energy efficiency needs of wineries: it guarantees flexibility thanks to the “Quick Setup” function which allows the modification, before installation, of some parameters usually blocked by MID and can be equipped with a 4Gb memory to record both measurement data and events every second.
As components of the heat meters we recommend to use the platinum resistance probes PLT ISONRG, designed for measuring the temperature; the output parameter of the temperature sensor is the electrical resistance and the operating principle is based on the variation of the electrical resistance of the sensitive element in proportion to the temperature change of the measured fluid.
If you are looking for quality solutions to monitor and make your cooling systems more efficient in the wine production and storage areas, do not hesitate to contact our specialists to request advice.