Beer is among the most energy-intensive foodstuffs during production.

But deep in the heart of the world’s brewing nation, Germany, engineers from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) are working to improve the energy balance of the frothy, frosty beverage.

They are looking into a new process combination that would allow energy savings of up to 20% during brewing.

For over 100 years, one fundamental technical precept has applied to all breweries: You cannot brew beer without a kettle. Only a mighty boil kettle is capable of generating the temperatures of 110 to 160 degrees centigrade required to boil down “crude beer,” or wort. This process consumes a huge amount of energy: Almost half of the overall energy consumption of a classical brewery, 45%, goes into wort processing. That is why engineers are working on solutions to reduce heat and electricity consumption in the brewing process.

One approach was to use combined heat and power (CHP) stations, which are highly energy efficient and environmentally friendly due their cogeneration of power and heat. In a perfect world, the theory is there, however, the technology seems unsuitable for breweries: CHP stations do indeed generate heat in addition to power, but only achieve temperatures up 90 degrees centigrade. Boiling down wort requires at least 110 degrees centigrade. To remedy the problem, engineers from the Institute for Resource and Energy Technology at the TU Muenchen have a new idea. They combined the CHP station with a “zeolite storage system.”

Such storage systems work thermo-chemically with zeolite spheres 2-3 mm in diameter. These porous pellets consist of silicate minerals and have excellent heat storage properties. One gram of zeolite has an internal surface of about 500 square meters. The pores absorb water to full saturation. When zeolite heats, the spheres dry up, which means there is a charge in the storage system. Once they add water again, the zeolite spheres release heat of up to 250 degrees centigrade. The brewing engineers at TUM feel if they take advantage of this thermo-chemical principle, they will be able to add the missing 20 degrees to the 90 degrees centigrade from the CHP station of the brewery.

To generate this addition heat, they intend to use an empty time slot in the production process.

“At night a medium-sized brewery needs little energy,” said project leader Dr. Winfried Russ. “In this time, we can feed unused heat from the CHP station into the zeolite storage system.” During the day, when high temperatures must boil the wort, additional heat can feed into the overall system almost instantaneously with the “heat boosting” press of a button. This places resource-efficient, low-energy beer within drinkable reach.

The newly combined production chain works perfectly already in computer simulations, and practical tests are just getting under way. Researchers from the TU Muenchen, in collaboration with colleagues from the RWTH Aachen, have now, for the first time, set up a test station at Weihenstephan that uses the new equipment combination to simulate brewery processes. “We already know that it will work,” Russ said. “What we don’t know is just how much energy can be saved.” The researchers are counting on at least 10%.

In a second step, the TUM engineers intend to model the energy balance of an entire brewery. The cleaning system, the brewing facilities, the fermenting room, and storage cellar, as well as the bottling facilities will all heated at only 90 degrees centigrade instead of using steam of up to 160 degrees. The researchers are counting on this, taken together with the additional waste heat utilization, to result in energy savings of altogether 20%.

“This is more than the total savings from all energy efficiency measures taken in the brewing industry during the last ten years,” Russ said.

New orders, production, employment, and inventories are contracting while prices are falling.

The Institute of Supply Management reported its February numbers this week.

Norbert J. Ore, chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee said, “Manufacturing continues to decline at a rapid rate in February. While production has slowed its rate of decline, employment continues to fall precipitously. Prices continue to decline, but price advantages are not sufficient to overcome manufacturers’ apparent loss of demand. Survey respondents appear generally pessimistic about recovery in 2009. Some express hope that the stimulus package will help their industry.”

Some anecdotal responses:

• “Customers across the board are being very cautious about ordering any stock.” (Transportation Equipment)
• “Business is very slow, some of which is due to seasonality, and some is due to the state of the economy.” (Chemical Products)
• “Asia previously was over 50% of our business and is now close to zero.” (Machinery)
• “Still seeing frequent attempts at increases while everything is reacting to an economy that is retracting.” (Food, Beverage & Tobacco Products)
• “Business slightly improved in February. May be the result of inventories finally coming into balance with lower demand.” (Paper Products)

*Number of months moving in current direction.

The first important test as to whether U.S. economic policy will change with a new presidential administration is unfolding in Washington. “Buy American” provisions being included in the massive economic stimulus packages have raised the ire of the multinational business community and their representatives in Washington, while hardening the resolve among companies and organizations lobbying on behalf of domestic manufacturers and workers.

The debate has raised emotions to a fevered level among implacable adherents on both sides of the free trade debate.

The scuttle was kicked off by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after it learned of provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 requiring that stimulus funds be used to buy only American-made iron and steel and textiles. That provision passed in committee by a vote of 55 to zero. A much broader provision that includes all manufactured goods did not make it into the House version of the bill, but it did in the Senate, due to the work of Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), author of the book “Take This Job and Ship It.”

Those supporting the Buy American provision have been stupefied by the opposition from the Chamber, the National Association of Manufacturers, editorial writers and companies such as General Electric and Caterpillar, which just announced job layoffs for 20,000 workers. They claim that the Chamber and big multinational companies that have shipped production offshore are raising red herrings about “protectionism,” and are wrongly questioning the legality of the provisions under international rules. None of this is germane, argue the Buy American proponents, because it has already been addressed in law and through WTO government procurement agreements. Moreover, they ask, what is an emergency economic stimulus intended to do? Stimulate the manufacturing sector of overseas competitors?

“We have the worst economic circumstances we’ve had since the Great Depression and manufacturing in America is in a total and complete free fall,” says United Steelworkers Union president Leo Gerard. “If the objective is to use taxpayer dollars — those are my dollars — to put people back to work in America and put the economy back on its feet, then the last thing we should be doing is buying products that are made offshore.”

In a conference call with members of the press, Gerard twice repeated Obama’s campaign pledge when the presidential candidate “hit the nail right on the head and said that this [financial sector collapse] is the final verdict on a failed economic policy.”

But virtually all of Obama’s choices for his economic team are of the “free-trade” persuasion. Obama told ABC News on Feb. 3 that including Buy American provisions in the stimulus “would be a mistake right now” and that it would be “a potential source of trade wars that we can’t afford at a time when trade is sinking all across the globe.”

Obama’s thinking aligns closely with traditional Washington corporate interests. In a Feb. 2 letter to the Senate leadership, National Association of Manufacturers president John Engler wrote: “[E]ven though this section may be well intentioned, NAM members are very concerned that the new ‘Buy American’ provision in the bill will potentially backfire on the United States and end up harming American workers and companies across the entire U.S. economy.”

On Feb. 3, Sen. John McCain, echoed that sentiment, and said when the debate over the Buy American provision hits the Senate floor he will bring with him pictures of former Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. W.C. Hawley, sponsors of the Tariff Act of 1930 because protectionism was the reason a recession turned into the Great Depression. The same thing will happen again if not stopped. “Consult any historian,” McCain said of the Smoot-Hawley legislation. “It is a matter of history” that protectionist legislation put the country into economic turmoil (although there are many people, including economic historians and Nobel Laureates, who refute the claim).

The Chamber of Commerce isn’t sitting still, either. “Some have slammed the U.S. chamber for opposing ‘Buy American’ provisions, calling our position ‘economic treason,’ ” says chamber president Thomas Donohue. “Try economic patriotism.” Donohue was so worked up over the allegations, he called in his quotes for the press release from Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Forum. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce spokesman said the chamber has received a “really positive” response for its opposition to the Buy American proposal. “Our members are so aware that these types of measures are not the type of route we should be going,” he said. “This is a pretty huge step toward protectionism.”

That is not the case, say those in support of the legislation. The Buy American provisions are not tariffs on imported products. “I want to be clear that our efforts are in no way to stop or slow international trade,” says Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and a supporter of the provision. “Enforcing Buy American already on the books and applying them to the stimulus bill is without a doubt the right thing to do — it is what people all over my state talk about.”

Other organizations, such as the Public Citizen Global Trade Watch, are busy countering the chamber’s arguments, stating that the business groups are engaged in a “fact distorting PR and lobbying effort” that has led to front-page newspaper stories about the potential launch of a global trade war. Such claims are “false” and “ridiculous,” says Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach.

The argument that Buy American provisions will trigger retaliation from foreign countries “is a fool’s game,” adds USW president Gerard. “I think there is a substantial level of hypocrisy in that. The president of France said unequivocally that France was going to help France’s auto industry, but France’s money is going to be spent in France. I didn’t hear anybody over here yelling and screaming about that. You’re going to get the Caterpillars and Wal-Marts standing up waving their red flag trying to scare the hell out of people and my response to that is really quite simple: if a huge domestic manufacturing trade deficit is so good for the economy, why doesn’t any other nation want one? In America, we try to tell American citizens that having a trade debt is good for America…No other nation wants the economic mess America has created.”

The only opposition to the proposal comes from newspaper editors, a few senators and “the companies that have outsourced so much of their work and have cost American jobs,” claims Sen. Brown. “This whole corporate-driven agenda clearly hasn’t worked for American workers and the American economy.”

The debate is even quite entertaining. Lou Dobbs on his CNN program on the evening of Feb. 2, said that it was “absolutely stupefying” that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would be “brazen” enough to come out against the Buy American provisions. “Anybody who thinks the U.S. Chamber of Commerce represents small business in this country, you’re hallucinating, let me assure you,” he said. The chamber, he continued, “represents multinationals without any allegiance whatsoever to the national interests and without any apparent interest to the common good of the American people.”

Dobbs asked reporter Bill Tucker on the live broadcast if NAM had weighed in on the issue. At that time, NAM had not. “Where are the little darlings?” Dobbs asked. “I think people are starting to figure out…how hoodwinked they’ve been” by groups purporting to represent the interests of America.

Dobbs then asked viewers to go to his Web site and participate in a poll: “Do you believe the fact that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce believes ‘Buy American’ is a bad idea shows just how much trouble our nation is in?” By early the next day, 4,216 people had voted; 90 percent of them (3,782) in the affirmative.

The letter opposed to the Buy American provisions was developed by the Emergency Committee for American Trade and was signed by the following organizations:

• Aerospace Industries Association
• American Business Conference
• American Council of Engineering Companies
• Associated Builders and Contractors
• The Associated General Contractors of America
• The Association of Equipment Manufacturers
• Business Roundtable
• The Coalition for Government Procurement
• Coalition of Service Industries
• The Information Tech. Association of America
• National Defense Industrial Association
• National Foreign Trade Council
• United States Council of International Business
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce