Presenter: Yasunori Tanaka, Kirin Brewery Company, Limited,
Yokohama, Japan
While tackling individual environmental issues such as
reducing CO2 emissions, Kirin has been constantly reminded
that maintaining environmental sustainability, along the Kirin
Group’s value chain, has much to do with the continuity
of society and of our business. Canned beer products were
introduced into Japanese market in the 1970s. The can share
has increased year by year, and these days it reaches around
70–80% of the market. As for Kirin Brewery production,
70% of the products are canned beer, and more than half of
the CO2 consumption in the whole brewery is used for can
production. We have developed technologies such as CO2
usage efficiency improvements in the can-filling process, but a
further effort has been demanded to achieve the CO2 reduction
target the Kirin Group is aiming for. Therefore we decided
our next target area will be the seaming process. To prevent
product oxidation, a huge volume of CO2 is purged to exclude
O2 from the headspace of the liquid after beer filling and just
before seaming, and this process has been controlled basically
only through the CO2 flow rate. We successfully reduced
CO2 usage by heating it in the supply line according to the
combined gas law. As gas density is decreased by heating, the
mass (weight) of CO2 could be reduced in the same gas flow
volume as CO2 itself. CO2 temperature was controlled below
the heat resistance of any parts of the supply line, thus we could
construct this system only through the installment of a heating
device. We also observed that headspace O2 became lower
under high-temperature CO2 purging conditions. It is thought
that headspace O2 also heated, and it seemed to be effective in
reducing O2 density. None of the other concerns, such as odor,
packaging duration, and seaming performance, were observed.
This new method was able to reduce approximately 20% O2
usage in the can seaming process without any changes in beer
quality and packaging performance.
After graduation from Ukiha technical high school in Fukuoka,
Japan, Yasunori Tanaka joined Kirin Brewery and worked in
the packaging area of the Fukuoka brewery from 1994 through
2009. He has developed his expertise especially in canning
operations, including quality control, quality assurance,
and efficient production. He was involved in the Fukuoka
brewery renovation project in 2006. He moved to the Technical
Development Department in 2009 and has been working on can
material weight reduction and CO2 reduction in can fillers and
seamers.
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