WUSTL SAB Interns

This week we wrapped up our time at the Rosslyn plant. I was able to finish my project and P&ID drawing, which will be checked over by Monique and hopefully utilized. While I had some difficulties sizing things on Visio, it was a really fun experience and interesting to work on. Today we moved backed to Sandton and to the guesthouse we stayed at the first week of our program, so we can present our work at the main office in Sandton. It's crazy to think that out time here in South Africa is coming to a close. Over the weekend we branched out to the province of Limpopo, where we participated in a variety of activities. We first went to Thaba Monaté Game Lodge, where we did some zip-lining. The views that we saw while zip-lining were incredible, as there were beautiful mountains and scenery in every direction that we looked. This was my first time zip-lining, so I got an adrenaline rush every time we zipped down. We then went to the Thaba Kwena Crocodile Farm just down the roa

This was our last week at the Rosslyn Plant so I spent most of the week working on wrapping up my different projects and preparing to present on my work next week. I got to train operators at the plant to work on with a calculator I made, which was really cool because now I know that one of the projects I worked on will definitely make a lasting difference at the plant. This Saturday we took a suggestion from Rob at the Bentley Lodge and hired a driver to take us up to Bela Bela. We went zip-lining across a gorge, toured a croc farm where we got to eat croc burgers, and then went around a monkey sanctuary. It was all really fun to do, and a great last day in the area. Nozomi and Rudy had never been zip-lining before so it was a fun new experience for them, and I enjoyed it too, though it wasn't my first time. The croc farm had a lot of both baby and giant adult crocs, including a 700 kg, 42 year old one that was massive. We learned that because of the low temperature the crocs don&

This week I finished up a potential design to include a CIP across the entire stabilizer system. After getting approval of my design from Monique, I started to draw a piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) on Microsoft Visio. The P&ID will help  show where the piping and process equipment are with relation to the new instrumentation and control devices that I am including in my design. I hope to have this finished in the next couple of days, so I can perform cost analysis if I have enough time.  We participated in taste testing again this week. I can now tell more frequently when a beer is off , but it's still hard to describe what is wrong with it. However, I think I am starting to pick up certain scents and tastes. For example, I can easily detect when a beer has too much acetaldehyde (AA), which makes the beer smell like green apples. Another thing I am sensitive to is diacetyl which gives the beer a butterscotch smell if there is too much of it.  It is interesting

So this week has been mostly spent finishing up a number of my projects. I've been writing reports, guides, proposals, and learning how operations work around the plant so that I can integrate the new practices I'm proposing. Its been a fun time meeting different people around the plant and learning how the company tracks how well the plant is operating. In our afternoons we've still been going to he pub after work for free beers and Nozomi and Rudy have made some friends to play pool with most days. Since Im not a big pool player I've been talking with different people while they play and we've met some really fun people. This week has been a fun little wrap up of all of my different projects, and was supposed to be the last week we spent at the Rosslyn Plant, but after reaching out to various people involved with our program we managed to get an additional week here. We thought that getting another week getting experience at the plant would be better than a week i

This week we continued to work on our projects and brainstorm potential solutions. I've been assigned to design a CIP for the stabilizer, a specific part of the racking line. The stabilizer makes silica hydrogel, which is the stabilizing agent, and is distributed to the racking line. The hydrogel prevents any hazing and loss of quality in the beer. While some parts of the stabilizer system can be cleaned through CIP such as the make tank, other parts can and have not been cleaned. I am working on finding a way to clean all the parts of the stabilizer system with maximum efficiency and minimum cost. Additionally, we got to experience taste testing for the first time at the plant. Since we were not experienced, it was hard to tell some differences between some batches of beer. However, we were able to tell when the look, smell, or taste of a beer was drastically off and determine it was not good enough for distribution. On the weekend we went to the Pretoria National Botanical Ga

Hello WashU + any and all readers, my name is Rudy Lawler. I am an incoming Junior in Mechanical Engineering - I was at summer school during the start of the program which is why this post is just about my first week. After getting in Sunday dead tired, we quickly got into the swing of our projects. I spent the first two days taking tours of the brewery, having conversations/quizzes with some of the leads, and reading a manual on all of the equipment used in the Brewery's packaging lines. After that, my lead Terrence and I ran a "loss and waste analysis" on the packaging hall and found a good source of water loss for me to investigate: a tunnel pasteurizer that is currently using 10 times the water projected by the manufacturer. For the last 3 days of this workweek I read up on Pasteurizer technology, found the pathways by which water is lost/consumed by the pasteurizer, and gone over some theories that Terrence has for why the machine discharges more water than it shoul