Remote automatic process control systems for small breweries

我们的行业合作伙伴，Amber啤酒厂，已经在GTA生产小批量精酿啤酒17年了。琥珀啤酒厂致力于以最低的价格创造最可饮用的精酿啤酒。它的多伦多之家啤酒是20多年的测试和精心完善的结果，口感清爽。在酿造过程中，每种啤酒在9°C下进行7天的初级发酵，然后在5°C下陈酿5-6周，然后进行清洁过滤。保持工艺精确以保证每批产品的质量对公司至关重要。多年来，所有这些步骤都是手动进行的：员工需要仔细监控每种酿造的温度、湿度和发酵水平，并打开/关闭各种阀门以保持质量控制。

Our industry partner, Amber Brewery, has been making small-batch craft beer in the GTA for 17 years. Amber Brewery is dedicated to creating the most drinkable craft beers at the lowest prices possible. Its Toronto House beer is the result of over 20 years of testing and carefully perfecting a clean-tasting lager. In the brewing process, each brew has a primary fermentation of 7 days at 9°C and is then aged between 5-6 weeks at 5°C before undergoing clean filtration. Keeping the process precise to guarantee the quality of every batch is of paramount importance to the company. Through the years, all these steps have been conducted manually: staff are required to carefully monitor the temperature, humidity, and level of fermentation for each brew and switch on/off various valves to maintain quality control. In this proposed research we aim to develop a remote process control system to advance Amber Brewery's methods with digital technologies. A local computer will be configured as the control center, and other computers or smart phones will be able to remotely access this control center to adjust an array of valves, establishing a significantly improved production process. This will be a significant step towards process automation in the craft brewery industry, reducing human errors and effectively boosting product quality. Even though some automation systems are available in the market - e.g., Siemens's Braumat 7.0, Proleit's Brewmaxx, etc. - these systems are designed for large breweries that are able to incur a high design cost and high maintenance cost, which is not feasible for small companies like Amber Brewery. In this project, we aim to design a cost-effective automation system for smaller breweries. There is a considerable market for this proposed technology, as there are over 50 small craft breweries just in Greater Toronto Area (GTA) that could benefit from this product.