Focus on new plants: Anheuser-Busch, Wuhan, China A change of air for China’s largest beer cellar

A fermenting room has to be cool and dry - this is a challenge in a hot, humid Chinese climate. Munters GmbH of Hamburg successfully installed an air-conditioning plant including air dehumidification for Anheuser-Busch in a newly erected production plant in Wuhan, China.

It is really cold and wet in this room. Compared to the ambient temperature which gets up to 40°C in this part of China, 10°C is really icy. Condensate forms on the external walls of fermentation vessels and storage tanks as well as on pipes in the fermenting room, it collects on the undersides and drips continuously to the floor, onto fittings and onto electrical switchgear. There are pools on the floor, corrosion is eating away at steel structural parts. 22..

The maintenance crew is really pushed to prevent mould spots forming in difficult-to-access corners, using water, steam and cleaning chemicals. The walls have to be repainted and the floor has to be refurbished regularly.

The owner made a decision to change this situation fundamentally when revamping and extending the plant, and to install air-conditioning with sorptive air dehumidification, in order to balance temperature and humidity optimally.

This was no easy job because the fermenting room area referred to is not a small back street brewery in the port area of Shanghai, it is the Chinese production plant of Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewery with headquarters in the United States.500 m3 of enclosed space had to be air-conditioned such that condensate, bacteria and mould formation could be avoided. The job was complicated by the fact that large quantities of fresh air were required to compensate for the CO2 release from the production process.