Hydrodynamic cavitation can be produced by passing a liquid through a constricted channel at a specific velocity. The formation and implosion of bubbles in the liquid releases tremendous localized energy in the form of shockwaves.
“The collapse of those bubbles has been measured at temperatures around 5,000 degrees Celsius and pressures near to the equivalent of the bottom of the ocean or 1,000 atmospheres of pressure—very, very high,” Clarke says. “When that happens, you end up with a micro-shockwave that is not altogether different than the blast of a bomb. That shockwave happens at the microscopic level in the fluid, and whether the waves are destructive or productive depends on your ability to control the process," he says.
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“You're talking about a phenomenon that every engineer in this country was told never to let happen—never let cavitation occur, because it will tear apart a pump or a propeller or something that you don't want to have eroded away. That happens when you don't control the zone in which the cavitation occurs," Clarke says. However, Arisdyne’s controlled-flow cavitation technology controls the location, size, density, and intensity of the implosion of bubbles in the zone to create optimum process conditions, he says.
Higher Yields
For ethanol producers, using controlled-flow hydrodynamic cavitation could mean obtaining higher yields of ethanol from the same amount of corn. In a dry mill ethanol plant, the process could be used to reduce the size of mechanically milled starch particles inside the slurry, thereby increasing the surface area of the particles, resulting in a faster hydrolysis of starch to sugars.
“The analogy I use is that it's the difference between putting a sugar cube in hot tea versus putting powered sugar grains in the tea,” Clarke says. “The dissolving occurs tremendously faster [with granular sugar] because more of the tea can surround the sugar and cause it to disappear.”
Arisdyne is working with ethanol technology firm Delta-T Corp. to determine just how much more ethanol might be produced using slurries processed using controlled-flow hydrodynamic cavitation. Arisdyne is cavitating corn slurries at its lab in Cleveland and then sending them to Delta-T’s lab in Williamsburg, Va., for performance testing.
“I found Arisdyne through my normal patent searching and I was intrigued that they have a patent application out there where they are looking at enhancing yield through hydrodynamic cavitation and, specifically, in dry mill ethanol plants,” says Mark Shmorhun, director of research and product development at Delta-T. “We're looking to confirm both enhancements in yield and whether there are any other unexpected benefits or drawbacks to the technology.”
Clarke says so far, test results are positive. “Our early tests are confirming,” he says. “The release of starch has been more than 5 percent above what is handled at a current plant,” which Clarke says is just the starting point; it might easily be increased through optimization.
Delta-T is hopeful, Shmorhum says, because there is good evidence that the technology should work as proposed. “There is a good body of work on cavitation and what it can do for particle size reduction,” Shmorhum says. “Cavitation has applications, broadly, [and] this is a new application of an existing and fairly well-understood technology. The theory and the body of evidence out there points to what I would say is a reasonably high probability of success for this technology.”
Shmorhum says Arisdyne’s technology is attractive in that it should be easy to implement in an existing dry mill plant. “The Arisdyne technology is attractive to me because of the simplicity of the concept,” he says. “I like things that are elegant and straightforward and this one has those attributes. Relatively speaking, it's not a complex operation to deploy and, in theory, it should be able to enhance yield through particle size reduction and by better preparing the starch for hydrolysis and fermentation.”
Award-Winning Technology
Arisdyne’s proposed use of controlled-flow hydrodynamic cavitation to increase yields at dry mill ethanol plants helped the company to win a 2009 Northeast Ohio Technology Coalition (NorTech) Innovation Award. Arisdyne also secured more than $7.5 million in funding during its first year of operation, including an investment from Chevron Technology Ventures.
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