Nitrogen Generation Beats Bulk Storage Option

The Challenge

Wells and Young's Brewing Company, is the UK's largest privately owned brewery and is a leader in cask ale and premium lager. With passionate farmers and expert brewers, the beers are brewed using techniques over a hundred years old, but in one of the UK's most modern breweries. 

Maziaks have supplied and serviced Wells and Young's compressed air system for over 7 years and following the largest ever nitrogen generator installation in Europe at Rohm and Haas (UK) Ltd we talked to Wells and Young's about the benefits of replacing their bulk liquid nitrogen with their own generation equipment.

Significant savings can be achieved:

  • Generate to your own required purity - no need to pay the price of pharmaceutical quality N2 which is not required. The net cost can be 20 to 30 times less.
  • No added Health & Safety requirements due to handling and storage of N2.
  • Not tied in to long supplier contracts.
  • Not reliant on deliveries from supplier.
  • Generate, store and use on demand.  This way you can run it hard, store it and then turn it off, thereby saving energy when the system is shut down.

The Solution

The sheer scale of the Parker domnick hunter system installed by Maziaks is noteworthy. We took a dead piece of the Wells and Young's' site and built a small and compact generation system. To do this, we decommissioned buildings and electrics and built a new building with a mezzanine floor. This was situated right next to their existing bulk store. The system is modular, so there is future flexibility to adjust the system to revised needs. 

The project length at Wells and Young's reflects the complexity of the requirements and contrasts with other installations we have completed, where we have built a containerised plant room at Maziaks' workshop and installed this at the customer site within 5 hours. 

The Result

Wells and Young's will achieve a 75% reduction in costs. Typical savings depend on the quantity of N2 used - the bigger the usage, the bigger the saving.

What they said

"Maziak's ability to handle the scale of the project was impressive, and even more so is the fact that we hope to achieve payback 12 months from installation and will reduce our annual N2 costs by over 75%."

Jeff Richens, Engineering Manager

A testimonial from Jeff Richens
A testimonial from Jeff Richens