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Flavy FGC from Bucher Vaslin

Bronze medalist Flavy FGC is a large-capacity filter system for big wineries designed to save energy. water and cleaning chemicals, according to the company. Flavy FGC also recovers more wine than other filtration system. It was designed for wineries or bottling plants that filter wines at less than 100 nephelometric turbidity units (NTUs). The machine is expandable.

The filtration system initially relies on pressure from the head tank—instead of its pump—to operate the filter. It saves energy by not running a pump immediately, said Benoit Murat, a Bucher Vaslin representative based in Bordeaux. A sensor monitors the pressure. The pumps kick in when pressure runs low.

Flavy FGC operates on low pressure. As a result, the membrane does not plug as much as other machines, Murat said, thereby making cleaning the membrane faster and easier. The larger filter is for the wine while a smaller filter continuously filters the retentate. The permeate is used to backflush the system. At the end of the cycle, the liquid left inside the filter is pumped and filtered to minimize wine losses.

The first two Flavy FGC systems were installed in Bordeaux late 2022, Murat said, and should be available in the U.S. in 2023. Bucher Vaslin’s distributor for filtration systems in the United States is Gusmer Enterprises Inc.