Corn Plus is also driven to reduce its energy costs because of the potential for higher corn prices as fewer acres will be planted this spring, compared with the previous year, and a growing demand for the commodity in the United States and overseas.
With that in mind, it wasn’t surprising when in mid-March Corn Plus hosted a three-day pilot test on a distillers wet grains microwave drying process. Corn Plus is the first ethanol plant to express interest in such technology. The process was developed and patented by Cellencor Inc., an Ames, Iowa-based technology research company focused on developing processes that enhance ethanol production. The pilot test was designed to determine the economic feasibility of the unit in an operating ethanol plant.
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Madison, Wis.-based Alliant Energy Corp., the utility service provider for Corn Plus and marketer of Cellencor’s microwave drying unit, introduced the two companies. Alliant Energy met with Cellencor representatives about a year ago to help the start-up firm make connections with businesses such as Corn Plus, which was the first ethanol plant in Alliant Energy’s service territory. According to Dave Wentzel, strategic account manager for Alliant Energy, the facilitation of the pilot test at Corn Plus is one of a suite of services the utility company offers its customers. “Our goal is for our customers to be low-cost producers in the industry,” Wentzel says. “Cellencor is certainly a key component of that going forward.”
In tests conducted at Iowa State University’s BECON Facility, Cellencor’s industrial microwave drying line was proven to be more efficient and reliable than traditional energy-intensive, natural-gas-fired distillers wet grains dryers. Initial calculations indicate the system should start paying for itself in two to five years, but the partners are hopeful that the commercial testing at Corn Plus will yield more conclusive data. Cellencor gets its microwave drying equipment from New Hampshire-based The Ferrite Co. Inc., which touts itself as the world’s largest industrial microwave manufacturer. Cellencor holds exclusive marketing rights to Ferrite’s technology globally.
Using this technology, Corn Plus predicts it will result in a reduction in operating costs of up to 20 percent. “Microwaves use less energy to dry the product than natural gas systems because they work from the inside of the product out, as opposed to the outside of the product in,” says Cellencor President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Wicking. Additionally, by using a lower heating temperature—200 degrees Fahrenheit—damage to amino acids in the distillers grains is reduced. That damage can dramatically impact distillers grains quality, according to Wicking. “It actually worked out very well,” Kor says. “The product dried well, looked very nice and smelled nice. With conventional drying you get variations in smell or color based on whatever dryer you have or how much syrup you have on it and so forth. This system didn’t affect those factors.”
Although not all of the pilot test results were available at press time, the parties involved expect the results will be positive. So far, “the results we got from Corn Plus are very encouraging in terms of energy usage, environmental benefits, generation of carbon credits and lower water usage,” Wicking says.
For Corn Plus, the microwave drying technology will not only allow the company to save on natural gas costs, but also to be a model for others in the industry looking to curb production costs.
Benefits Upon Benefits
In addition to reduced energy use and the resulting cost savings, there are other advantages to using the microwave technology, including reducing a plant’s water use. In a typical corn-based plant, it takes 3 to 4 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. With the Cellencor microwave drying system, the company estimates that it could retain 20 percent to 25 percent of the water used in the drying process. “We can get the vast majority of the [water] and recycle it back into the plant,” Kor says. “My goal is to not only reduce energy costs but also reduce water consumption. Ethanol plants are getting bombarded with the water usage issue.”
The microwave drying technology also reduces harmful volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. Compared with traditional natural-gas-fired rotary drying drums, Cellencor’s microwave drying technology reduces the amount of dryer vapors from entering the regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO) before exiting a plant’s outside emissions stack. “The emissions results looked very encouraging,” Kor says.
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