Control system design for the starch mashing phase in the production of beer

The starch mashing phase, the first one in the brewing process, has a fundamental influence on the quality of the final product. In particular, a good temperature control can significantly reduce the product variability, and also improve the process efficiency by (slightly) reducing the mashing phase duration. In this work, controloriented models of the mashing process, including biochemical reactions’ representation and energy balance equations, are used to synthesise and test some temperature control schemes. The mix of equationand algorithm-based modelling allowed by Modelica allows to size the control equipment to the (nearly) final detail, including for example the comparison of different types of heating actuators.