Minister Congratulates Finalists for Ireland’s Most Efficient Beer Cooling System
The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland awards took place last night in Royal Hospital Kilmainham. The annual black tie gala dinner event was attended by over 300 people from Irish business, industry, research centres and government bodies, and the focus of the awards was to highlight the significant contribution that energy innovation and research makes to the Irish economy and environment every year.
160 companies entered the annual SEAI awards competition in total, making it the most competitive year in the 12 year history of the competition. In the innovation category, entrants were whittled down to just four finalists, one of which was Kilkenny Cooling Systems.
Kilkenny Cooling Systems was granted a prestigious place in the final of the SEAI awards for the innovative new VS Beer Cooling System, which is independently proven to offer significant savings over all other existing ice bank and glycol cooling systems currently available in the Irish market.
Conventional ice bank and glycol beer systems run at full power at all times, to keep the product in the lines cool and fresh. The Kilkenny VS System is different – it works by detecting when demand in the outlet is higher or lower and it adjusts the refrigeration power output of the system accordingly – delivering the same perfectly chilled fresh beer, but consuming the absolute minimum amount of power in the process.
The innovative design project was led by John Smee, engineer with Kilkenny cooling systems and is the culmination of over a year’s research and development involving such organisations as Cork Institute of Technology, SEAI, as well as leading breweries, refrigeration contractors and companies which specialise in control and variable speed pumping systems.
John has a strong background in Research and Development, possessing a mechanical engineering master’s degree from UCC, where he completed a thesis on mathematically modelling a rotary processing system-providing a good basis for further R&D in his career within the family business.
John is pictured above (right) together with Gerard Lally, Sales manager (pictured left) and the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Alex White TD (Centre) with their SEAI certificate received last night at the awards ceremony.
