Avaliação e optimização do sistema de qualidade na linha de enchimento de cerveja em barril

Abstract

Unicer Bebidas S.A. is the Portuguese leading company in the beverages sector and leverages its business activity in the beers and bottled water, nonetheless it is also present in the segments of soft drinks, wines, among others. Under the traineeship held in the first semester of the second year of Master Degree in Food Engineering, an experimental project was conducted in partnership with Unicer Bebidas S.A. The principal aim of this project was to optimize and evaluate the Quality System in the beer keg filling line of the company. The proposed internship was supervised in the Industrial Quality Department where it was possible to develop useful and practical tools to improve the control and management of the filling line. Therefore, and after a follow-up of the several activities performed in the different Supply Chain departments, an exhaustive survey of the controls actually done in the filling line as well as the laboratory analysis executed for the finished product was carried out in order to verify whether these were being accomplished according to the internal procedure described in the Company Inspection and Testing Plan. During the course of the work, it was possible to suggest some improvement opportunities in the inspection and monitorization processes of the keg filling line. One of these improvement opportunities was linked to the absence of an analytical methodology for analysis of CO2 during the process as well as in the finished product. Since this is a critical parameter for the organoleptic quality of beer, efforts were made to develop a methodology that allowed the CO2 analysis in beer. The method was characterized by a good precision, with low standard deviation values in all the performed analyses, leading us to conclude to that the developed methodology is suitable for monitoring the CO2 content during the beer transport process through the pipes as well as in the beer keg. It was also studied some quality parameters that could affect the intrinsic and extrinsic integrity of the non-refillable PET keg. With this aim, a study assessing the tightness of the keg was conducted and basically consisted of analyzing the CO2 content for different kegs that were previously stored to different temperatures for a long period, as well as analyzing the gas retention pressure behaviour of the tube junctions of the DraughtMaster closures. In this study, it was verified that the content of CO2 decreased over time for all the tested temperatures. However, this decrease was more pronounced for higher storage temperatures. Regarding to the gas retention pressure tests, and according to the obtained results, several acceptance/rejection limits were presented. In some performed tests, it was verified the presence of some DraughtMaster closure constituents whose gas retention pressure was below the defined criteria, and therefore it is recommended the inclusion of this analysis in the Inspection and Testing Plan of the closure suppliers. Subsequently and as a way of responding to a logistical problem found in the returnable kegs park located in the Production Centre of Leça do Balio, tools were developed in order to support their management which allowed the identification and characterization of several defects and their limits of acceptance/rejection. Parallel to this, and through an exhaustive sampling carried out in the keg filling line, it was verified the existence of a significant amount of kegs classified as “not acceptable”, suggesting consequently that it should be implemented in the future some action plan that includes for example training and awareness programs for all the technicians at the level of kegs segregation and subsequent reparation. In the end of the project, an analysis of the non-refillable PET keg discarding was carried out and it was found that most of the defects did not correspond to the real situation. Therefore, a methodology for the analysis of the discarding was developed in order to improve its evaluating process and further data processment. This methodology consisted on the conception of a catalog for the identification and further classification of the defects that can be easily found in non-refillable PET kegs.

Date of Award	Jun 2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Pedro Miguel Rodrigues (Supervisor) & Paulo Magalhães (Supervisor)