Tradition with a MODERN SPIRIT

There are many different ways of celebrating the forthcoming millennium, for those of us lucky enough to be free from watching over fractious computer systems. Whether you're in London watching a wall of fire rush down the Thames, in New York watching the ball drop in Times Square, waiting for the sun to rise over the hills of New Zealand, or at home putting on that old Andy Stewart album, it's more than likely that a cork will be fizzing out of a bottle at some point. For those with the foresight to get hold of some of the real champagne, rest assured that process firms have been hard at work ensuring your bubbly is the best.

Union Champagne, based near Epernay, is now applying high-technology to the final stage of its production process, replacing visual inspection of its bottles before they leave the plant with an array of cameras linked to a machine vision system. Supplied by Cognex, the system completes six inspections of every bottle before it leaves the line, and can handle 8000 bottles per hour. The system uses four video cameras, linked to an expert system, which compare the images the cameras `see' with an `ideal' image stored in its memory. Discrepancies trigger the removal of the faulty bottle, and the images of each bottle are stored as production data for quality checking.

The first camera in the array checks that the bottle contains the right amount of wine, and that the cork has been inserted fully and has not split at the bottom (this could lead to glue contaminating the wine). The second camera checks that the champagne is sediment-free and not cloudy. The third looks for glass splinters in the wine - occasionally a bottle will explode on the line and shower glass fragments into bottles that have not yet been corked. Finally, the fourth checks for fragments of opaque floating matter, like cork pieces.

Champagne, however, is not the only drink for Y2K revellers. Scotland likes to think that it's the home of New Year celebrations, what with the traditions of Hogmanay, first footing and that song whose words nobody can remember. And, of course, Hogmanay's essential component is a barley-derived amber liquid with around 40 per cent alcohol content. But even malt whisky distillers - possibly the most tradition-bound of process engineers - have to move with the times.

Malt whisky distilling is a batch process, which uses traditionally-shaped and crafted process vessels such as fermenting vessels, stills and spirit safes - sometimes themselves hundreds of years old. But even the malt distilleries have to move wth the times, and are currently trying to find ways of coping with new regulations that compel them to treat spring water before use. Spring water is used at two points in malt whisky distilling: mixed with malted barley to make the sugary liquor which ferments to form alcohol, and to dilute the spirit after distillation before it is filled into casks to mature.

Scotland's Private Water Supply regulations require treatment of the water to kill off microorganisms. Using chemicals to disinfect the water is anathema to malt whisky distillers. Therefore, United Distillers has opted for ultraviolet disinfection. This works by penetrating the cell membranes of microorganisms and destroying their DNA, preventing them from reproducing but not affecting the taste of the water. The system, supplied by Slough-based firm Hanovia, has been installed at three Speyside distilleries - Benrinnes, Cragganmore and Dailuaine.

Environmental matters are also on the mind of the Tomintoul distillery, part of the JJB Group. Here, the problem area was the spent lees - the residue from the distilling process. Distilling is carried out in copper vessels and, because of the temperature of the process, the copper tends to leach into the lees. As the plant effluent is discharged into a local river, the distillery had to find a method of removing the copper.

Various technologies were considered, but the final vote went to membrane ultrafiltration. This technique, which uses semi-permeable membranes, was used between the still and the final water treatment plant. The filtration plant, supplied by Koch Membrane Systems of Stafford after an on-site trail using a portable unit, uses 12 filtration modules, each containing 24 square feet of membrane area. The lees leave the filters with a copper content of around 0.2mg/litre - less than a hundredth of the concentration before the system was installed. The copper concentration in the biomass remaining in the lees - which is enriched with phosphorus and nitrogen and used as a fertiliser in nearby farmlands - is also reduced, from 15g/kg to less than 400mg/kg.