Boilers & Heat exchangers
The corn needs to be cooked before it can be fermented. This is one of the two primary uses of heat at an ethanol plant. The other is the distillation process. The heat is produced at one of two steam boilers. These vaporize steam for use in the rest of the plant.
The steam is used to heat various things at the plant using heat exchangers. Heat exchangers are also used to cool things. Sometimes you have one process flow that needs to be heated and another that needs to be cooled. Then you might be able to use a heat exchanger to save energy.
The boiler for the plant is still in California.
It has been removed from its old facility and is ready for shipment.
Here's the boiler in its original position:
The above boiler does 78,000 pounds per hour with a Nox rating
of 13 and costs $3 million new.
These are two of our spiral heat exchangers. They are
used to transfer heat from the hot mash to the cool mash:
Some more stainless steel tubed heat exchangers: