Corn Plus Ethanol Fluidized Bed System

Minnesota based cooperative Corn Plus Ethanol awarded Harris Mechanical and its partner Von Roll Inc., the contract to provide a bubbling fluid bed combustor, waste heat steam generator, and air pollution control system at its 40,000,000 gallon/yr ethanol production plant.

Development of the Corn Plus project began when another customer approached Harris Mechanical to help Corn Plus find a solution to a maintenance problem concerning a syrupy waste byproduct. With Harris & Von Roll’s experience with fluidized bed reactors having just completed a similar project together for the Metropolitan Council of Environmental Services (MCES) plant in St. Paul, MN, and their combined experience in the power and ethanol markets, they found a solution with benefits.

Rather than drying the messy byproduct, combining it with a solid byproduct, and selling it as animal feed like they had done in the past, Harris and Von Roll suggested using a fluidized bed system that uses the syrup as fuel to generate 100,000 pounds of steam per hour to run the plant.