Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2011
Journal or Book Title
Applied Engineering in Agriculture
Volume
27
Issue
6
First Page
993
Last Page
996
DOI
10.13031/2013.40611
Abstract
The rapidly expanding U.S. corn ethanol industry produces huge quantities of wet distillers grains and about 70% of this material is dried to 10% moisture. Drying this material requires about one-third of the energy used to operate a dry-grind corn ethanol plant. Tri-Phase Drying Technologies of Norwalk, Iowa has developed a rotary drum dryer which reclaims energy from the exhaust air stream. The objective of this research was to determine the energy requirement of the Tri-Phase dryer by pilot scale drying tests with wet distillers grains. Multiple tests of the pilot-scale dryer showed an energy input requirement of about 2890 kJ/kg (846 Btu/lb) of water removed when drying wet distillers grains from about 28% to 24% moisture. This is less than half the energy usually required for a drum dryer or a grain dryer. Use of this dryer design, scaled up to dry distillers grains at ethanol plants, has the potential for large energy savings for the corn ethanol industry.
Access
Open
Copyright Owner
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers
Copyright Date
2011
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Bern, Carl J.; Pate, Michael B.; and Shivvers, Steve, "Operating Characteristics of a High-Efficiency Pilot Scale Corn Distillers Grains Dryer" (2011). Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Publications. 463.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_pubs/463
Included in
Agriculture Commons, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons, Mechanical Engineering Commons, Oil, Gas, and Energy Commons
Comments
This article is from Applied Engineering in Agriculture 27 (2011): 993–996, doi:10.13031/2013.40611. Posted with permission.