Fluke 810 Application Note What’s Shakin’ With Your HVAC System?

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Application Note

From the Fluke Digital Library @ www.fluke.com/library

Yuengling brews up a

winning maintenance

approach

It’s tough to win against giant global

competitors.

But the Yuengling Brewing Company, founded in

1829, has gone head-to-head against the Goliaths

of beer making—and tasted victory.

Andrew Jackson had just moved

into the White House when

German braumeister David G.

Yuengling (pronounced “ying-

ling”) opened his brewery in

Pottsville, a coal mining town

90 miles northwest of Philadel-

phia. Five generations later, the

company is still family owned,

now run by Richard L. “Dick”

Yuengling, Jr.

Yuengling’s brews have been

toasted by President Barack

Obama, and they’ve gained

a devoted regional following.

In 1987, noting the grow-

ing popularity of microbrews,

Dick Yuengling re-introduced

Yuengling Traditional Lager,

a beer more full-bodied than

national competitors offered.

Walk into a Pennsylvania tavern

today, ask for a “lager,” and the

bottle set down is likely to say

“Yuengling.”

From that home base the

company has expanded, distrib-

uting its seven brews up and

down the eastern United States.

In 1999 Yuengling acquired a

40-year-old Stroh’s brewery in

Tampa, Florida, then in 2001

opened a second Pennsylva-

nia brewery near Pottsville.

Yuengling is now the seventh-

largest brewer in the US.

Operator: Bill Friedman, electrical

supervisor, Yuengling Brewing

Company

Measurements: Spot-check heat

readings, check for constant amount

of pressure, check vibration on motor

and blower, calibrate Hart-compatible

instruments

Tools: Fluke 810 Vibration Tester,

Fluke 744 Documenting Process

Calibrator, Fluke thermal imager,

Fluke 1735 Three-Phase Power

Logger

Fresh Yuengling beer ages in huge tanks,

while below, empty kegs await their pre-

cious cargo.

Photo courtesy of Yuengling Brewery.

On the bottle line. Yuengling’s Tampa brew-

ery produces approximately 600,000 barrels

each year.

Photo courtesy of Yuengling Brewery.

Testing

Functions

Case

Study

2 Fluke Corporation Yuengling brews up a winning maintenance approach

A really lean company

Electrical supervisor Bill Fried-

man has worked at the Tampa

plant since 2000. The Yuengling

maintenance team of nine

mechanics, plus Friedman and

two other electricians, led by

plant engineer Santo Lazarra,

keeps the vintage facility brew-

ing and bottling up to a million

barrels of beer yearly. Ironically,

brewing a product people use

for end-of-day relaxation has

its own tensions. It takes a very

lean operation to win against

mega-brewers many times

Yuengling’s size.

That suits Yuengling just fine.

Frugal and no-nonsense, Dick

Yuengling describes himself

as a “production guy,” accord-

ing to The Wall Street Journal.

Yuengling’s 250 employees pro-

duce as much beer as the 700

employees at a major competitor.

The Yuengling formula seems to

be working. The paper reported

that Yuengling sales grew 12

percent, to two million barrels,

in 2009—the only double-digit

growth rate among the 10 larg-

est US beer suppliers.

Dick Yuengling “runs a really

lean company,” said Friedman.

“He doesn’t have a lot of over-

head as far as management.

Here in the brewery you walk

around—there used to be maybe

30 offices here [under Stroh’s],

and 20 percent of those are

occupied.”

In a plant that’s now more

than 50 years old, maintenance

“is a constant battle,” Friedman

said, “although here in the past

three or four years we’ve been

investing some money in a lot of

good improvements. We just got

a new bottle packer that puts

it in the 12-pack, and we are

now putting in another packer

that can do the fridge packs

and 24-packs, what we call the

suitcase packs.”

A preventive maintenance

(PM) approach might seem

ideal in such an older facility.

“It sounds good and looks good

on paper, but you really don’t

have the manpower to do a PM

program,” Friedman said. “While

we definitely do PM on the cru-

cial machines, we have limited

resources, and as a result, a lot

of the time we spend in work

out in the field is repairs. It’s just

time for the bearing to wear or

the motor to go.”

What is a “crucial machine”?

The brewery powerhouse is

crucial, where gas-fed boilers

produce steam that supplies

the brewing kettles and pas-

teurizers. “If the powerhouse

goes down, the whole plant

goes down,” Friedman said. Air

compressors powered by 150-hp

motors supply the plant with

air at 120 psi, used to clean

kegs before filling. Any device

that could fail and affect prod-

uct quality is also considered

crucial.

“That’s a lot of money

. . . especially if you’re

wrong”

To keep these machines online,

Friedman relies on Fluke test

equipment, including thermal

imagers, a wide array of electri-

cal test tools, and the new Fluke

810 Vibration Tester.

“One of the things I try to do

on a regular basis is thermal

imaging,” Friedman said. “I use

it on our major equipment—our

ammonia compressor or our

mash tub agitator, a huge mixer

that stirs the ingredients. Obvi-

ously heat is a good indicator of

impending failure on the motor

bearings and on the gearbox

itself. Even on water tank levels,

It’s a long way from 1829, when Yuengling

opened its first brewery in Pennsylvania.

These controls operate the keg line.

Photo Courtesy of Yuengling Brewery.

if I don’t know what the level

is and I just want to spot-check

against our instruments, I’ll use

the thermal imager.”

The imager spotted trouble

recently in the 75 hp motor

powering a positive displace-

ment blower that transfers spent

grain 250 feet to a storage silo.

“We were having sporadic issues

with it,” Friedman said. “I got a

thermal imager and I could see

that the motor was just running

way, way too hot—about 230°F

(110  ° C).”

Friedman used his Fluke

1735 Three-Phase Power

Logger to check the machine’s

performance. “Because it is a

positive-displacement pump, if

you know the amount of current

draw and the speed that the

blower is running, it should be

putting out a constant amount

of pressure,” he said. “If it’s not,

then you have a problem. Com-

paring those factors we could

see that we weren’t getting the

output we should.”

A follow-up test with the

Fluke 810 Vibration Tester iden-

tified a bad bearing at the free

end of the motor, so Friedman

changed out the motor. But prob-

lems continued. “When you have

two pieces of equipment that

are bad, which one is it—is it the

blower or the motor?” Friedman

said. “It’s a chicken and egg sit-

uation. After we knew the motor

was good, because it was new,

we put the 810 on again and it

showed that the drive end bear-

ing of the blower was bad.” The

issue became one of confidence.

Could the 810 be trusted?

“The blower is massive—you

can’t just say we’ll change it and

see if it works, because it’s not a

five-minute job,” Friedman said.

“You’re looking at five to eight

hours of downtime and that’s a

lot of money...especially if you’re

wrong. So you have to be pretty

confident in your analysis.” The

blower bearing was indeed bad,

and caused vibration that in turn

had damaged the motor.

3 Fluke Corporation Yuengling brews up a winning maintenance approach

Calibration times 250

The brewery’s 100 large elec-

tric motors aren’t all Friedman

focuses on, of course. Process

control at the plant depends

on the accuracy of some 250

instruments. “Instrument cali-

brations, we’re proactive about

that, instead of waiting until

the instrument is way off—it’s

too late at that point,” Friedman

said.

“We use the Fluke 744 Docu-

menting Process Calibrator. That

is just a great, great tool that I

use extensively,” he said. “It will

hook up to a Rosemount or any

instrument that is Hart-compati-

ble, that communicates via Hart,

which is an instrument proto-

col. You can view the device’s

parameters, change the device’s

parameters. Some devices have

a self-diagnostic that you can

check the electronic circuitry

with, all through this inter-

face. You actually see what the

instrument is reading, if it’s

temperature or pressure.

“From a calibration standpoint

we isolate the instrument from

the plant process and hook a

known constant up to it, like a

known pressure. I have a Fluke

700PTP-1 Pneumatic Test Pump.

So I’ll pump that up to say 100

psi or 20 psi and make sure the

instrument is reading exactly

that. If not, I have to make some

adjustments.”

Friedman also watches over

the plant’s extensive industrial

Ethernet network, using Fluke

Networks test instruments to

ensure cables and other net-

work elements meet industrial

requirements for quality and

reliability.

This label spells trouble

A labeling machine is a complex

device, and trouble can be hard

to track down. “We were having

problems with the labeler and

it was hard to pinpoint. It was

just sporadic problems,” Fried-

man said. “I just took the Fluke

imager out there and shot

underneath, where the rotating

parts were. It stuck out at me

like a sore thumb: the gearbox

was over 200 degrees,” he said.

Here comes Yuengling! Adding

breweries in Tampa and Port

Carbon, Pennsylvania, has

enabled Yuengling to expand

its sales territory. Here bottles

exit the pasteurizer.

Photo courtesy of Yuengling

Brewery.

What’s in your toolbox? Yuengling Tampa Brewery

Fluke tool Uses

Fluke thermal imager Detecting possible problems in motors and

mechanical equipment (such as an overheated

motor on a spent grain pump)

Checking liquid levels in tanks in the brewery

Fluke 810 Vibration Tester Identifying bearing problems in rotating equip-

ment, such as blower motors and pumps

Investigating possible problems detected with the

thermal imager

Fluke 1735 Three-Phase

Power Logger

Comparing current draw against rotational speed

and output pressure on positive displacement

pumps to help verify bearing problems detected

with a Fluke 810 Vibration Tester

Fluke 9040 Phase Rotation

Indicator

Verifying correct connections in three-phase

systems

Fluke 744 Documenting

Process Calibrator

Verifying the performance of temperature and

pressure measurement instruments

Viewing and changing device parameters in

HART-compatible instruments

Fluke 707 Loop Calibrator Verifying that analog PLC cards are reading signals

and working properly

Fluke 700PTP-1 Pneumatic

Test Pump

Delivering air at known pressure to calibrate

instruments and sensors

Fluke 322 Clamp Meter Checking current draw and power consumption

Fluke 771 Milliamp Process

Clamp Meter

Checking instrument and control signals without

breaking the circuit or interrupting the process

Fluke i3000s Flex AC Current

Clamp

Measuring currents of up to 1,500 amps through

any leg of a substation

Fluke Networks test tools Testing and repairing the Ethernet network that

links 60 programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in

the brewery

“The gearbox was full of water,

not lubricant. The seals on the

gearbox went, so water was able

to penetrate. We changed the

gearbox out and all was fine.

“We use Fluke tools, they help

us out a lot,” Friedman added.

“They’re good quality tools and

they help us solve problems and

that’s the bottom line.”

Waiter, another round of

Yuengling lagers!

4 Fluke Corporation Yuengling brews up a winning maintenance approach

Fluke Corporation

PO Box 9090, Everett, WA 98206 U.S.A.

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PO Box 1186, 5602 BD

Eindhoven, The Netherlands

For more information call:

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Web access: http://www.fluke.com

©2011 Fluke Corporation.

Specifications subject to change without notice.

Printed in U.S.A. 6/2011 4067465A AW-EN-N

Modification of this document is not permitted

without written permission from Fluke Corporation.

Fluke. Keeping your world

up and running.®

How Yuengling

makes a better brew

Milled, heated, cooked, pumped, cooled, aged,

and filtered—beer and its ingredients are on

the move throughout the production process.

1

2

3

4

5

6

Corn grits and malted barley are transferred

to the hoppers. The malted barley is milled

to the desired size. The corn grits and part of

the malt are combined with water in the grits

cooker to be softened and liquefied, the rest of

the malt is combined with water in the mash

tun, the “cooker mash” is added to the mash

tun, and the mashing cycle is complete.

The liquid (now called “wort”) is separated

from the grains. The wort is transferred to

the kettle, boiled for sterilization, and hops

are added. The boiled wort is then pumped

to the hot wort tank and cooled.

As the wort is transferred to the fermentation

cellar, pure cultured Yuengling yeast is added.

The yeast converts the sugar in the wort into

alcohol and carbon dioxide, while impart-

ing its own special flavors. When the wort

has fermented, it is called “beer.” The yeast

is reclaimed for the next generation of brews,

and the carbon dioxide is reclaimed, purified,

and later injected back into the beer.

The beer is pumped through a centrifuge

to increase clarity and then cooled to 32°F

(0 °C) before being transferred to the aging

cellar. The beer ages for 14 days to increase

clarity and allow the flavor to mature.

The mature beer is cooled again and

filtered for clarity, and the carbon dioxide

adjusted to insure superior flavor and

foaming qualities before the beer is

moved to the finishing tanks.

The beer is then put in bottles,

cans, or kegs for customers.