The global Food & Beverage (F&B) sector is increasingly complex for businesses who must meet the ever-changing demands of consumers while scaling up production to feed a rapidly growing world population – and all while cutting energy costs and meeting sustainability targets. The emerging digital revolution could hold part of the answer, with the latest advances in measurement, monitoring and analysis providing operators with the insights needed to make better decisions in all areas of operation and energy demand. Here, Sandra Perletti at ABB explores the latest advances in digitalization and the pivotal role it can play in today’s F&B production.
There has never been a more challenging time to be in the industry. Consumers want a greater variety of products than ever before. They want foods which are affordable and those which align with their lifestyle or values. Consumers increasingly want products which are free from allergens or ingredients they are intolerant to, and most importantly, they want to know that their food is responsibly sourced and manufactured in a sustainable way.
And they are right to voice their concerns about sustainability. It is estimated that the food industry consumes 30 percent of global energy and accounts for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions1. The sector must play its part if we are to limit global warming.
While consumers and Governments alike have flagged the need for sustainability in the industry, the biggest driver to cutting energy use over the past 12 months has undoubtedly been cost, as rising gas and electricity prices pushed up production costs.
Increasing food production, improving quality and variety, reducing energy use and maintaining a commitment to sustainability is a huge ask for F&B operators. The good news is that many of these objectives can be achieved – at least in part – using digitalization.
Digitalization refers to the smart connection of assets. These assets could include the electrification equipment which distributes power around a production facility, the heating and cooling plant, even the motors, drives and compressors which run processing machinery. With industrial IoT technology, F&B operators can make informed decisions towards improving sustainability, energy efficiency and the reliability of operations at every level by measuring, monitoring and analysing their facilities in great depth and creating actionable insights.
Some F&B manufacturers say they don’t need any more ‘gadgets or toys’ to solve their problems. They want to see a tangible difference and a return on investment. With digitalization you can have all that with relatively little effort and it can have a big impact – in fact, the more digitalization you have, the more you see the value of it.
Measurement: where is your energy going?
Let’s start with how digitalization helps F&B manufacturers measure their energy use. The guiding principle is that you can’t change what you can’t measure. Every F&B segment is different, so it is crucial to do an energy assessment to find out where your energy is going. For example, in sugar processing it is the milling and centrifuges which are most energy intensive whereas in confectionary, the conches, compressors and mixers use most of the energy.
Installation of digital tools is simple and with them, energy use data for each piece of equipment can be captured and collated on a central dashboard for analysis. Using this data, you can set sustainability goals, realistic targets for reductions and see where further CAPEX spend may be required to upgrade outdated equipment to more efficient technology or to install new components. This could include measures such as adding a variable speed drive to a fan, pump or compressor which can reduce energy use by 25 percent2and achieve a return of investment of around one year.
Monitoring and diagnostics: keeping your facility running like clockwork
Once you have completed an energy assessment and put plans in place to make improvements, the role of digitalized equipment does not stop there for F&B operators. If production needs to flex up in periods of peak demand, the most important thing for a manufacturer will be preserving uptime. With digital solutions monitoring equipment day and night, any anomalies in performance can be highlighted very quickly and maintenance can be scheduled before potential downtime occurs.
This predictive maintenance can also extend the life of equipment, protecting the company’s assets and keeping them in service and running at their optimum for longer.
Analysis: Using data to improve food quality
Digitalization creates a lot of data, and this is only useful if you are analysing it and using the insights it offers to improve operations of your facility. With the same digitalization infrastructure as for addressing energy efficiency and by adding just few additional sensors, you can ensure power quality is maintained to guarantee uniform product processing and ensure food quality, and you can better manage the expansion of your facility as it grows to boost capacity or add new lines.
Digitalized future
As part of plans for a more sustainable future, many F&B manufacturers are turning to onsite energy generation such as solar roof panels to help power their facilities and bring down energy bills – especially with continuing concerns around energy security. Digitalization is key to integrating new power supplies into a facility as it can regulate self-supply and demand and balance it with the incoming power required from the grid to top up supply when required. It can also make decisions automatically about when to send excess energy back to the grid or to a battery energy storage system for use later on.
Creating truly sustainable F&B operations is not simply a case of replacing one product or piece of equipment here and there to reduce carbon emissions. Enabling the energy transition goes beyond your own facility – it is directly linked via energy market signals with the integration of renewables in the regional energy grid. When the sun and wind are abundant the price goes down, while adjusting energy consumption to grid needs helps decrease overall CO2 emissions. All this can be achieved with digitalization, while operators also benefit from increased reliability and safety.
With the knowledge that digitalization offers, operators can meet their energy reduction and sustainability targets while running a more flexible and agile operation which will go some way to tackling many of the other challenges the industry is facing now and in the future.
1http://www.fao.org/3/i2454e/i2454e.pdf
