21 November 2010

United Ethanol to install anaerobic digester - Ethanol Producer Magazine

A $6.75 million project to install an anaerobic digester at a 50 MMgy ethanol plant in Milton, Wis., will begin in a few weeks. United Ethanol LLC will complete the project with the help of $2.25 million in state energy program funds. ?It?s a way to extract a little more value out of our inputs, the corn, and make the plant greener and more energy efficient,? said Alan Jentz, United Cooperative and United Ethanol vice president of grain operations and risk management.




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On Oct. 21, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle announced $2.95 million in funding for three southern Wisconsin companies, including United Ethanol. The money comes from Wisconsin?s economic development tax credits and energy program, which is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The other two projects were $250,000 in tax credits for Standard Process Inc., a whole food supplements company, and $450,000 in energy program funds for Idle Free Systems Inc., which sells battery-powered, idle-elimination systems for over-the-road trucks.


In total, more than $55 million in state energy funds from the recovery act are being used in Wisconsin to help manufacturers with energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. According to the governor?s office, Wisconsin is the only state using 100 percent of these funds for these types of projects. In August, Ace Ethanol LLC received $595,000 in funding from the same program for heat exchange equipment.

United Ethanol's' anaerobic digester will utilize a portion of the plant?s thin stillage to create methane, which will help reduce natural gas use at the plant by up to 25 percent. The project will have an estimated four-year payback, Jentz said.


The project has multiple benefits, including reducing the plant?s carbon footprint. The anaerobic digester is also expected to reduce the number of fermentation solids that have to be recycled, reduce fermentation inhibitors, reduce evaporator bottlenecks and eliminate syrup load-out, Jentz said.


Technology provider Eisenmann Corp. will install the digester. The project should take about a year to complete. ?We hope to get that under way here in the next few weeks, so hopefully it will be online by this time next year,? he said.


Anaerobic digestion isn?t the only technology upgrade project United Ethanol has on its plate. David Cramer, president and CEO, mentioned three projects in the company's August newsletter. The company is working to tie in the CO2 scrubber stack and process vent gas scrubber stack into the regenerative thermal oxidizer for odor control. In addition, it has a license agreement with GreenShift Corp. to use its corn oil extraction technology. United Ethanol has also contracted with Arisdyne Systems Inc. to install controlled flow cavitation, a patented process to reduce particle size, disrupt cell structures and disperse agglomerates for increased ethanol yield.


View the original article here

Save Money With Renewable Energy Biogas

Renewable energy biogas is a fuel mixture that can be made from biomass and contains methane and carbon dioxide; it has sixty five percent of the former and thirty five percent of the latter. Biogas is usually prepared by anaerobic fermentation using bacteria which can degrade organic substances to form this fuel gas.




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Many people have now turned to using renewable energy biogas as it is highly economical and also safe for the environment. In addition, it also helps to decrease organic waste load that is otherwise dumped and left to degrade on its own. By preparing this fuel gas, we help to reduce this load efficiently without polluting the environment.


Another advantage of renewable energy biogas is that it can be created using minimal investment even in the backyard of your home. The digested sludge that is given out as a waste product is very useful as manure for agronomic purposes and thus helps to grow produce in an organic manner. Since biogas can be used for all home needs, it cuts down on the use of LPG and thus on the consumption of fossil fuels.


The manure that is formed this way has fewer odors and can be easily assimilated by plants; there is also the added advantage that using this fertilizer can reduce the risk of disease causing organisms affecting the plants which is good both for the economy as well as health of the society. This also helps to keep out other insects near the storage pit thus maintaining the area neat and tidy.


There is very little money involved in building an apparatus for making renewable energy biogas. Invest in this today itself and create free fuel for all your household needs from the organic wastes that gets accumulated at home.


If you're considering adding a solar panel to your home, to dramatically lower your electricity bill, then check out my video's on how I made my own solar panel for only few hundred dollars!

20 November 2010

The Basics Of The Anaerobic Digestion Process

It is, therefore necessary to contain and treat these wastes so that the treated waste sludge is stable; the offensive odour is removed; the quantity of pathogenic bacteria is reduced; the mass and volume of sludge is reduced and the sludge can be readily dewatered and dried.




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Anaerobic digestion is the most common method in use today for treating waste water sludges. Its attractiveness comes from it being a relatively stable process if properly controlled, with low operating costs and the production of a useful by-product, a combustible gas, which can be used as a source of energy.


The advantages of this process:


The organic content of the sludges is significantly reduced by conversion into gaseous end-products; the obnoxious odour of the sludge is removed and the final digested sludge has a characteristic 'tarry' odour; fats and greases are broken down by the process; there is a significant reduction in the quality of pathogenic bacteria; there is a marked chemical change after digestion. The liquid fraction (supernatant) contains increased levels of ammonia as a result of the breakdown of organic nitrogen (proteins). This makes the digested sludge liquor potentially suitable for agricultural use; the biogas that is formed is a mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) that can be used for digester heating or to generate power.


The disadvantages of this process:


A relatively high initial capital cost is involved, which tends to limit the process to medium to large size waste water works. The slow rate of bacterial growth requires long periods of time for start-up and limits the flexibility of the process to adjust to changing feed loads, temperatures and other environmental conditions. The process is prone to upsets if not regularly monitored and if corrective action is not taken in time.


Anaerobic Digestion is a multi-stage biological waste treatment process whereby bacteria, in the absence of oxygen, decompose organic matter to carbon dioxide, methane and water. In this way, the waste sludge is stabilised and the obnoxious odour is removed. The process can, however be described adequately and simply as occurring in two stages, involving two different types of bacteria. The first stage, the organic material present in the feed sludge is converted into organic acids (also called volatile fatty acids) by acid forming bacteria. In the second stage, these organic acids serve as the substrate (food) for the strictly anaerobic methane-producing bacteria, which converts the acids into methane and carbon dioxide. The end result of the process is a well-established sludge in which 40 to 60% of the volatile solids are destroyed. Finally, a combustible gas consisting of 60 to 75% methane and the remainder largely being carbon dioxide.


The digestion process is continuous. Fresh feed sludge must be added continuously or at frequent intervals. The gas formed during digestion is removed continuously. In high-rate digestion, stabilised sludge is displaced from the digester during feeding. In low-rate digestion, sludge 'supernatant' is normally removed as the feed sludge is added, stabilised sludge is removed at less frequent intervals.


It is essential that the organic acids formed in the first stage of the waste treatment process are converted to methane at the same rate at which they are formed. If not, they accumulate and ultimately lower the pH, leading to inhibition of the second stage of the digestion process and digester failure. Temperature must be maintained within certain ranges - heating increases the activity of the anaerobic bacteria reducing the required digestion time. A pH of 7,0 to 7,5 is recommended to encourage the methane-producing stage. A correctly operating digester will have sufficient buffer capacity (alkalinity) introduced from the breakdown of organic matter.


Michael Russell


Your Independent guide to Waste Treatments [http://waste-treatments.com]

19 November 2010

The Final Product Of Biomass Energy

Utilization of biomass as an alternative energy source has attracted people to promote its use. This is caused by a decline in fossil energy reserves. This is a dangerous point for energy security in the last decade.




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To avoid future energy crises, they began to increase use of renewable energy sources such as biomass. More than that, the use of fossil fuels increases the concentration of sulfur and greenhouse gases in nature.


Governments in various countries around the world have adopted policies favorable to the use of biomass as an energy alternative. So that industry players will get a subsidy from the government.


Biomass can be used as energy with a wide variation. Utilization of biomass produces electricity, heat for industrial facilities, home heating and fuels vehicle.


Conversion of biomass for energy is called bio-energy. This conversion can be achieved with some solutions that thermochemical and biochemical technologies. Thermochemical process is divided into three technology solutions are combustion, gasification and pyrolysis.


To understand the meaning of each Technology solution, we can learn from the final product On combustion, have the final product steam, process heat and electricity energy. Each has its own type of function. Steam can be used to drive steam engines, while the heat can be used for processing in the chemical industries.


The final products of electric can be used more flexibly. This product of gasification is the steam, the process of heat, electrical energy and methane gas fuel and hydrogen. Methane and hydrogen can be used as a fuel cell system. This system is increasingly popular as the technology of the future.


Pyrolysis technology solutions, has the final product is charcoal, coal and bio-gas fuel. Charcoal and bio-coal can be an analogy as coal but more environmentally friendly. This is because emissions from the production of bio-coal and charcoal lower than coal. Biochemical process produces anaerobic digestion the technology solution. This technology has the final product of ethanol, water for irrigation, compost and biogas.


Nugroho Agung Pambudi has been writing articles including papers for nearly 3 years now. His journal papers can be reached both international journal and conference. Come visit his latest website at http://www.geothermalheatingandcooling.us which help people find information about geothermal heating and cooling

The New Waste Technologies: Recycling and Creating Energy From Waste

Many governments, towns and communities throughout the Western world are making new rules concerning the treatment of Municipal Solid waste (MSW). New concepts of waste management are needed in which the idea of recycling is of major importance.


Incineration will be used for the easily burnable fraction of what cannot be recycled, and for some kinds of hazardous wastes such as hospital waste, while the left over will be disposed of in sanitary MSW landfills.




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The recycling of products is best done at source by the public when they put their waste out for collection and this is called source separation. However, if the waste is mixed up when collected it can still be separated again by mechanical separation plants or by hand picking using human labour and a conveyor.


The plants in which the separation of mixed wastes is carried out are usually called Mechanical Biological Treatment Plants, or MBTs. These plants cost a lot to build, are expensive to run. They also use a lot of power which reduces the value of recycling by expending non-renewable energy in the process.


The last decade has seen source separation introduced in many countries, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. Now, more recently source separation is being implemented in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe now that European Waste Regulations require so much of the MSW produced not to be landfilled.


The most important reasons to separate waste at the source are:


- The difficulty to find sites for new landfills and the negative attitude of the public towards landfilling and incinerating.


- Source separation improves the quality of the products which will have to be recycled. The fact that the organic fraction is separated from the inorganic fraction means that the organic fraction will have a low concentration of heavy metals and will be free of metals, glass and stones, while the inorganic fraction will be drier and less dirty.


The degree of recycling which can be achieved depends of the system used for source separation but it is the highest if the separated waste is picked up at the houses in separate containers.


A high percentage of recycling can only be achieved though by recycling the organic fraction of MSW whereby anaerobic techniques such as the anaerobic digestion process are very promising since they not only produce a humus-like residue, comparable to the compost produced in aerobic conversion techniques, but also a form of energy, biogas, which can be easily upgraded to several forms of valuable energy.


So, by source separating your waste you can make a difference - especially if there is an Anaerobic digestor in your area.


Why not find out more about waste technologies, and encourage your friends to recycle. Your children and later generations will benefit - don't they deserve the same opportunities you had?


Steve Last is a regular contributor of waste management related articles. Visit http://www.waste-technology.co.uk, the Waste Technology Web Site to find out more.


He also maintains a dog breed and many others at The Dog Breeds Compendium Tibetan Terrier page.

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