JPS5814955B2 - Transport pipe valve closure control system for beer transport before filtration - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a control system for a transport pipe valve when unfiltered beer stored in a liquor storage tank is force-fed to a filter.

When sending pre-filtered beer stored in a storage tank to a filter, it is common practice to provide a discharge hole almost at the bottom of the storage tank and pump compressed air from the top of the tank. The unfiltered beer in the storage tank can be sent to the filter without leaving any residue behind.

However, with this method, as the storage tank empties, air bubbles begin to enter the beer in the transport pipe, and towards the end, a large amount of air suddenly enters.

However, entrained air is undesirable because it inhibits the function of the filter, and if a large amount of air enters and a very dense aggregate of bubbles, so-called beer bloom, occurs, the transportation pipe valve should be closed immediately. There is a need.

Therefore, it is necessary to provide a device to monitor the state of air entrainment in the middle of the transport pipe.

Conventionally, this monitoring method has been to use a so-called sight glass to monitor this with the naked eye, and when beer blooms are detected, to manually close the transport pipe valve.

Therefore, the operator cannot leave the sight glass for a certain period of time, and the location where the sight glass is installed is low and humid, which is not desirable from the viewpoint of labor management.

Moreover, the generation of air bubbles is complicated, and if beer foam is generated instantaneously, it is easy to judge when it is time to close the valve.
Small amounts of bubbles may occur several times before this occurs, and it is best not to close it at that time.

In this way, it is difficult to judge when the valve should close;
Moreover, even if the judgment could be made, it required many years of experience as it required nimble and quick valve operation.

However, because there was no suitable method for accurately and instantaneously determining when to close the transportation pipe valve and immediately closing the valve, no countermeasures had been developed despite the long history of beer brewing.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a system for automatically operating a transport pipe valve as described above.

The present invention provides that the beer flower that triggers the valve closure is
Focusing on the ability to almost completely block light traveling across this area, this beer flower area is detected optically and the transport pipe valve is closed.

According to the present invention, when the pre-filtered beer stored in a liquor storage tank is injected with compressed gas from the upper part of the tank and is force-fed from the outlet at the bottom of the tank through the transport pipe toward the filtration machine, the beer is pumped into the transport pipe. In the method of closing a transport pipe valve located in the middle of the transport pipe when beer bloom occurs in the beer being sent, an electric valve is used as the transport pipe valve, and the transport pipe valve is installed in the middle of the transport pipe. a detection tube portion having at least opposing glass windows through which the beer before being sifted can be seen through; a light source disposed outside one of these opposing glass windows and emitting beam-shaped light; and a light source disposed outside the other of the opposing glass windows. a photoelectric conversion element that converts the light that has passed through the detection tube into an electrical signal; A transport pipe valve for transporting beer in the past, characterized in that it has a control signal generator that generates a control signal for closing the transport pipe valve when the signal level reaches a predetermined value that is lower than the signal level when the transport pipe valve is in use. A closed control method is obtained.

Note that the electric valve mentioned above refers to an electromagnetic valve or a motor-driven valve.

Next, a description will be given with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a conventional valve closing system for transporting beer before rinsing.

By opening the cock 2 at the top of the tank and injecting compressed air, the beer stored in the storage tank 1 is pushed out from the outlet 3 at the bottom of the tank to the transport pipe 4, and the outlet is opened and closed by the valve bundle 5. It passes through a valve (not shown) to the other three tanks (
The beer is combined with unfiltered beer that has passed through the transport pipe 8 from the transport pipe 7 (not shown), and is pumped through the transport pipe 7 toward the sifter (not shown).

The state of the pre-filtering beer moving in the transport pipe 4 is monitored by a sight glass 9 integrally provided above the outlet valve (valve handle 5).

Since the bottom of tank 1 is generally long horizontally (in the vertical direction of the paper plane of the figure), air bubbles can mix in even when the beer remains before filtration. It can be seen passing through the glass like a tornado.

Then, the observer closes the outlet valve by turning the bundle 5 when the air increases to an extreme level and the inside of the sight glass is momentarily filled with beer blooms.

However, the state of the air bubbles is not necessarily uniform, and may increase suddenly or gradually.

While watching the sight glass, the operator partially closes the valve with the bundle 5 as a preliminary action for closing due to the increase in foam, and then fully closes the valve with the generated jet of beer flower.

The upper valve (not shown), which is opened and closed by bundle 10, is for removing air from the sight glass.

There is also a type of sight glass that allows the beer to pass through the sight glass before it passes through the glass, such as a direct type that is installed just before the filtration machine or the bottling machine.

The conventional method described above can also prevent the risk of air being sent into the overflow machine, but as mentioned earlier, it requires a high level of skill in operating the valve and determining when to operate it, and it also poses labor management problems. Therefore, it is desirable to be able to automatically and accurately close the valve.

FIG. 2 is a partial sectional view of an embodiment in which a detector used in the transportation pipe valve closure control method of the present invention is integrated with the transportation pipe valve.

The detector shown in this figure retains the functionality of a conventional sight glass, but this is only for checking the detector's operation.

The transport pipe valve is an electric valve consisting of a valve section 23 including a valve 25 and a valve controller 24.

The lower end of the glass cylinder 11 is fitted into a part of the bulb part 23, and the upper end is fitted into the upper lid 13, and the glass cylinder 11 is fixed in a watertight manner between the two by four bolts 14.

Note that items such as waterproof backing are omitted from the figure.

The same goes for the following. Windows 15 are centrally symmetrically formed in the detection tube 12, and a light source unit 16 is fixed to one window facing the window, and a photoelectric conversion unit 17 is fixed to the other window.

Light from a light source 18 in the light source unit 16 forms a narrow beam of light 21 by an aperture system 19 and a lens 20, and is converted into an electrical signal by a photocell 22 in a photoelectric conversion unit 17.

Although not shown, an infrared filter is installed in the front of the light receiver 22.

The valve portion 23 houses a valve 25 that opens and closes a passage by a valve controller 24 .

A guide 26 is provided at the inlet on the tank 1 side on the left side of the valve 23 in the figure, so that the inflowing unfiltered beer flows into the glass cylinder 11.

Further, the unfiltered beer accumulated in the glass cylinder 11 passes through the open hole of the valve 25 at the bottom thereof and is discharged from the outlet on the right side of the figure into the transport pipe.

Here, the excess beer that has accumulated in the glass cylinder 11 has exceeded the window 15 of the detection cylinder part 12 and has reached the exposed visual inspection window of the glass cylinder 11 above it.

Therefore, if there are bubbles during transport of the beer before clearing, the bubbles will rise inside the glass cylinder 11.

This rise of bubbles can sometimes take on the shape of a tornado.

The optical trap 27 is intended to prevent scattered light from the upper monitoring area from entering the photocell 22 as much as possible.

FIG. 3 shows a circuit of a control signal generator 31 that monitors the output electrical signal t of the photocell 22 in the photoelectric conversion unit 17 and generates a control signal for driving the valve controller 24. As shown in FIG.

In this control signal generating device, a photocell 32 receives standard light from a light source lamp 33 and generates an electrical signal.

In this case, the light source lamp 33 is ignited by the same power source (not shown) as the lamp of the light source 18, so that the output of the photocell 32 and the output signal X of the photocell 22 due to the transmitted light of the detector are different. This is so that the ratio is not affected by variations in the power supply voltage.

Here, the signal Adjust to.

On the other hand, the signal 2 is also amplified by the variable amplifier 35, and its output 2
The angle is adjusted to be equal to the output X of the amplifier 34 when the glass cylinder is empty, that is, Zo/X is adjusted to approximately 1 scale.

Then, the variable voltage divider 36 lowers 2° to, for example, 3, and the signal value at this time is defined as Z.

Then, the reverse transmittance Z/X is calculated by the divider 37 from the signals X and Z.
is calculated and output as signal Y.

As will be explained later using an example, this signal Y suddenly changes from a relatively small value to a large current exceeding 1 when beer bloom occurs.

Then, the valve controller 2 uses this large current as a control signal.
4 to close the valve 25.

□The actual operation will be explained below.

Once power is applied to the electric circuit and the characteristics of the light source lamp have stabilized, signal

Next, adjust the signal 2° so that it becomes 1 on the scale.

The voltage divider 36 is used in the third section in this case, but once it is determined, there is no need to move it thereafter unless there is a special purpose.

FIG. 4 shows temporal changes in the signal X due to the transmitted light and the signal Y (3Z/X) indicating the reverse transmittance after the above-described adjustment.

In this case, the first adjustment of the signal

Since both signals X and Y are recorded simultaneously on the same recording paper, Y is recorded with a delay of time A from X.

The horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis represents the maximum scale of 1.

Right end T.

This is the time when beer transportation began before Sawagawa.

From now on, the signal X will become smaller in 1 public money, indicating that the precipitate in the liquor storage tank 1 has flowed out first.

It took about 2 hours from the next T1 to T2.

During this time, the signal X remains almost constant.

After T2, it shows a change of about 2 minutes, which is about 20-30
The fact that the signal
.

It can be seen from the observation window that this bubble removal rises in the center of the glass cylinder 11 in a thin but tornado-like manner.

Furthermore, after t3, which is about 1 minute later, the above-mentioned bubbles become continuous and gradually increase in quantity, and the reverse transmittance Y increases accordingly.

At this time, the bubbles form a fairly thick tornado-shaped column.

Then, at T3, the number of bubbles suddenly increases, producing a large amount of beer flower, and the signal (Although it could be much larger, the device finger saturates just above 1 due to range constraints), the control signal causes valve controller 24 to operate and valve 25 to close.

Note that during the period from t3 to T3 when the signal can.

The signal changes shown in Figure 4 above are just one example.
In reality, each operation shows a different aspect.

For example, the bubble contamination that occurs at tl and t2 often occurs earlier, and the rate of reduction is often even greater.

In addition, the increase in bubbles after t2 is rapid, and the time between t3 and T3 is sometimes very short.Since the phenomena vary as described above, how to take the signal used for detection becomes an important issue.

For example, in the above embodiment, it is necessary to pay attention to the voltage division ratio of the voltage divider 36.

In other words, as seen at t3, the decrease in X reached a value close to 5, although it was rare, at a stage where the valve did not originally need to be closed. Therefore, the partial pressure ratio was still around 5 coefficients, but still higher than that. You will probably need to set it to a small value.

However, this limitation does not necessarily have to be followed, and even if the valve closes (a bell will notify you)
All you have to do is open it again and continue operation, which will only require a slight extension of operating time.

On the other hand, in this example, at T3, the signal X is close to zero on the record, so the signal Y quickly exceeds 1, but depending on how the beer blooms, the decrease in the signal X may not be sufficient. The partial pressure ratio cannot be made too large.

Up to now, the reduced value of X has been so small that it cannot be recognized on recording paper, so it is considered to be even smaller than the first factor.

However, if the partial pressure ratio is made too small and the valve does not close even though beer blooms actually occur, a large amount of air will enter the filter and deteriorate it, causing the partial pressure ratio to For example, 1. It is necessary to avoid making the situation below the relevant level.

Therefore, in practice, about 3 to 4 more would be appropriate.

In the above explanation, a large number of numerical values have been given regarding the magnitude of the signal X, the reading of the scale, etc., but none of these are limiting.

Further, the final target control signal may also be obtained by a method different from the signal Y (three Z/X) in the previous embodiment.

For example, a comparator may be provided in place of the divider 37, and a signal (control signal) may be generated when the signal X becomes smaller than the signal Z.

In this case, the signal corresponding to the Y signal in FIG. 4 only appears in a rectangular shape to the left of T3.

However, in this case t2. To detect the intermediate state at t3, it is necessary to generate another signal.

The point is that transmitted light is used as a detection means, and the valve controller does not operate even if the transmitted light decreases to about 5%, and only when it becomes smaller than a set value within that range does it obtain a control signal to operate the valve controller. do it.

In the above embodiments, the conventional sight glass that monitors with the naked eye and the detector of the present invention that conducts electrical monitoring are constructed using a part of the transport pipe as a common part, but it is noted that they may be provided separately. Not even.

However, if both are configured in common as in the above-mentioned embodiment, there is an advantage that the structure can be considerably simplified.

This means that even if the device of the present invention is installed, it is practically preferable to have something equivalent to a conventional sight glass for testing and confirming its operation.

However, if visual monitoring using a sight glass is not required,
It goes without saying that the optical detector of the present invention may be used alone.

Furthermore, in the previous embodiment, the beer before flowing through the detection cylinder 12 rises once and then descends, but instead of this, a structure may be adopted in which the beer flows from the bottom to the top or from the top to the bottom. It may also have a structure that flows well or horizontally.

However, in such a case, if sight glasses for visual monitoring are to be installed in parallel, their structure and mounting method will need to be different from that shown in FIG.

Furthermore, the transport pipe valves indicated by reference numerals 23 to 25 may be provided at separate locations on the transport pipe in contrast to FIG.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a diagram illustrating the conventional outlet valve closing method for transporting beer before filtration, Fig. 2 is a partial sectional view of a detector used in the method of the present invention, and Fig. 3 is a diagram illustrating the electricity used in the method of the present invention. FIG. 4, which is a diagram showing the circuit, is a diagram showing temporal changes in the signal X and the reverse transmittance Y in the above circuit. Explanation of symbols: 1 is a liquor storage tank, 2 is a transport pipe, 11 is a transparent glass tube, 15 is a window, 16 is a light source unit, 17 is a photoelectric conversion unit, 18 is a light source lamp, 21 is a beam light, 22
is a photocell, 23 is a valve section, 24 is a valve controller,
25 is a valve, and 31 is a control signal generator.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. When the unfiltered beer stored in the liquor storage tank 1 is injected with compressed gas from the top of the tank and is force-fed from the outlet at the bottom of the tank through the transport pipe toward the filter, the inside of the transport pipe is In the method of closing a transport pipe valve located in the middle of the transport pipe when beer blooms occur in the pre-wash beer being sent to the pipe, an electric valve is used as the transport pipe valve. a detection cylinder part provided in the middle of the transport pipe and having at least opposing glass windows through which the beer before internal filtration can be seen; and a light source disposed outside one of the opposing glass windows and emitting beam-shaped light. and a photoelectric conversion element disposed on the outside of the other, which converts the light passing through the detection tube into an electrical signal, and a photoelectric conversion element that receives the electric signal and whose size is such that air bubbles are mixed inside the detection tube. and a control signal generating device for generating a control signal for closing the transport pipe valve when the signal level reaches a predetermined value lower than the signal level when the beer is flowing.
Transport pipe valve closure control system for beer transport before filtration.