How to dealcoholise a drink ?

The press never stops talking about it, the consumption of alcoholic drinks is falling for several years now. (-10% in 10 years according to INSEE). At the same time, new offers of alcohol-free or lighter drinks are appearing which seem to appeal to more and more people.

But a question remains: how do you lower the alcohol content of a wine or beer?

To date, there are several technologies on the market:

- 1: The first is vacuum evaporation. This is a very low temperature distillation allowed by putting the product to be distilled under vacuum. The boiling point of volatile compounds such as alcohol is reduced to a maximum (about 40 degrees).

- 2: A second widespread technology is reverse osmosis: this is a physical process to separate the alcohol from the liquid by using membranes. It is the least space-consuming technology.

- 3: Finally, the 3rd technology known on the market is dealcoholisation using spinning cone columns (SCC). This technology uses a cold distillation principle using centrifugation to spread the liquid in a very thin layer on rotating cones. The technique, developed in Australia, is widely used across the Atlantic.

There is a growing interest in the subject and many people are trying to find the best method of dealcoholisation. This is the case, for example, in Spain, where 5 entrepreneurs have created a machine capable of dealcoholising a bottle of wine in 5 minutes. This technology is still only a prototype, with no commercialization announced yet.

If you would like to better understand these 3 main technologies and have more details, do not hesitate to visit the technology page of our website desalcoolisation.com.

Pierre Alcodes