Lesson 4 - Materials Application in Brewing
In this lesson we will discuss materials and their application in greater detail. This will include understanding their properties, advantages and disadvantages, and their main applications in the brewery. We will place emphasis on the materials most common in the brewing industry.
Ceramics
Ceramics are playing an ever-increasing role in engineering applications. As they cover a wide range of materials we will briefly look at them.
Crystalline ceramics
Crystalline ceramics are produced by the joining (fusion) and hardening of mineral substances. They are often fired at high temperatures. They are resistant to most conditions, including high pressures, temperatures and acids. They are also fairly resistant to caustic and are resistant to high temperature corrosion, abrasion and erosion. They can reduce wear and tear in certain applications.
They are however brittle and will break rather than bend; they are also weak in tension.
These disadvantages can be overcome by adding small amounts of long organic polymers.
Ceramics cover a wide range of materials. One of the most common ceramics is cement. Cement is widely used in concrete building applications. Concrete is typically a mixture of cement, sand and stones, and different ratios and quality of cement can result in very different strength concretes.
Another application would be ceramic tiles.
Glass
Glass is, to a great degree, simply molten silica oxide, or sand, as we know it. Many different additives give glass different properties.
Glass is not widely used as a result of its susceptibility to breaking. It cannot handle thermal cycling.
The main advantage of glass is its transparency.
A variety of glass is available, each with unique properties, advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is important that the correct glass type is used for application. In the same way that a car’s windshield is made from special shatterproof glass, the glass used in a processing environment needs to be just as correctly specified to account for pressure and thermal shocks.
In a brewery, glass is mainly used for sight glasses on pipes and vessels.
As promised earlier in the lesson, we will look more closely at insulation materials.