For bachelors planning their “last night of freedom”, it was probably a wonderful surprise: the invention of the self-cooling beer keg. The company Zeo-Tech from Unterschleißheim launched it on the market in 2001. Its inventor: Peter Maier-Laxhuber, managing director and partner of the company. As part of his doctoral thesis at the Technical University of Munich, the physicist had already studied zeolite: a naturally occurring, non-toxic mineral that absorbs large amounts of water when dried. In a vacuum, this process is accelerated to such a degree that ice is produced. The engineer used this principle to his advantage.
The CoolKeg principle: water and zeolite
The keg, which is encased in zeolite, is heated to 350 degrees on the outside. The water stored inside escapes from the heated material in the form of steam. The steam opens a valve and condenses on the cool surface of the filled inner container, where the water is absorbed by a fleece. The valve then closes automatically. If you open the valve before tapping the keg, the steam flows into the zeolite and heats up. The water remaining in the fleece immediately freezes, cooling the beer.
This invention made it possible to tap cold beer anywhere and at any time without using electricity. Peter Maier-Laxhuber’s company Zeo-Tech and Tucher Brewery from Nuremberg together got the keg ready for market launch. Other breweries were soon impressed by the technology and added the keg to their portfolio. Various keg sizes later came on the market. The CoolKeg has also won several awards, including the International Packaging Organization’s Packaging Award in 2001 and the Steel Innovation Award in the category “Innovative Products” in 2003. For Peter Maier-Laxhuber, this was reason to celebrate. Perhaps with a cold beer.
(Header: Pixel-Shot – AdobeStock.com, in the article: Zeo-Tech GmbH)
