The following is an article originally published by Ethanol Producer Magazine on February 11, 2025.
The 12-month results for Fluid Quip Technologies’ trademarked Low Energy Distillation and Grain Neutral Spirits systems are in. After more than a year in operation at Three Rivers Energy in Coshocton, Ohio, both bolt-on technologies outperformed initial estimates, according to Michael Franko, FQT’s vice president.
The LED system—designed to reduce process energy steam usage by reconfiguring distillation flow without relying on a membrane-based approach—was initially estimated to reduce steam usage per gallon of ethanol by 47% from the industry average of 14.5 pounds per gallon.
“The project has exceeded these goals and continues to exceed expectations,” says Eamonn Byrne, chief operations officer at Three Rivers Energy. The Coshocton plant was one of the first in the U.S. to deploy FQT’s LED and GNS set-ups, and according to Franko, FQT’s team has more than proven its ability to help ethanol producers reduce energy consumption and lower carbon intensity (CI) scores by reconfiguring distillation.
“The LED approach brings a lot of opportunities to the plant,” Franko says. “We see a significant expansion of this technology throughout the industry for its ability to lower CI.”
The LED and GNS systems partner well together, allowing access to new markets, as LED provides the added ability to produce high-purity alcohol (HPA) products through a revamped distillation setup.
Since 2019, a handful of ethanol producers have added GNS or other HPA production capabilities, most of which were designed to serve the hand sanitizer market. McCord Pankonen, service director of the ethanol and biodiesel divisions for EcoEngineers, says it makes sense for producers to invest in GNS or HPA production. He says the expected growth rate in HPA use in the next five years will range between 5% and 10%.
“A lot of people ask me why an ethanol producer would invest in HPA,” Pankonen says. “It is to diversify their portfolio.”
LED Efficiency
The opportunity of LED lies in its ability to cascade steam in a smarter way, Franko explains. “It utilizes the steam more efficiently. Many plants are using 20-year-old distillation technology. LED is a newer, proven distillation technology to operate more efficiently with lower cost.”
The LED process can lower a plant’s CI score by 4 to 6 points and cut steam usage by up to 50%. The system also eliminates the need for clean-in-place related downtime. Throughput could also be increased and water load reduced.
In traditional distillation processes, steam is used to boil the combination of fermented ethanol and water. The process allows the ethanol vapor to separate from the water. Directly injecting new or recycled steam into distillation helps control the temperature of the steam, which allows optimal ethanol separation from the water-ethanol mix.
Franko says the ethanol industry typically employs three methods of distillation: pressure distillation, vacuum distillation and hybrid distillation. Pressure distillation relies on two or more columns operating at different pressures in order to separate the water-ethanol mixture. Vacuum distillation utilizes a beer column, rectifier column and a stripper column, where steam is injected to separate the last of the ethanol after it has gone through the other columns. During that process, the injected water then must be removed downstream, increasing CI.
The LED system can be incorporated into either distillation design by eliminating the need for direct injection steam through a series of equipment changes, reengineering or rearranging flow patterns. Franko and his team refer to the changes as “distillation reclaim opportunities.”
The goal of LED is to arrange the hottest temperature and highest pressure on the cleanest fluids while reusing energy in multiple effects. Unnecessary phase changes are historically one of the largest users of energy in distillation, but LED removes them. This adjustment, while significant in the amount of energy conserved, is simple and operates similarly to existing distillation systems.
“This modern technology utilizes proven distillation principles, without a need for expensive replacement parts/membranes,” Franko says.
In some cases, an additional beer column will be added along with new reboilers. If the goal is increased ethanol production, molecular sieve capacity may also need to be increased. LED provides a great opportunity for low-CI expansion. The addition of reboilers, beer columns or molecular sieves are the main capital costs related to equipment additions, Franko says. “Changing a plant to an LED style setup should take roughly 12 months total project time, with minimal downtime, usually falling within a plant’s normal shutdown schedule.
“LED may be a unique operational setup, but it is not something new in a plant that they haven’t seen before,” Franko adds. “You just have to get the team to understand the different flow patterns.”
When Franko talks with prospective producers about the system, he says they often understand the process changes immediately and can envision how an LED system would work at their respective plants.
Past and Future of LED
The origins of LED link back to FQT’s work with two ethanol plants in Brazil. According to Franko, the FQT team, supported by Thermal Kinetics, helped the Brazil plants reduce energy consumption by using waste low-pressure steam.
The set-up endeavored to meet the needs of the biomass boilers, while maintaining the functionality of the distillation process. At a Sao Martinho plant in Brazil, the team integrated its LED system in conjunction with a mechanical vapor recompression technology to achieve what FQT says is one of the lowest steam-usage rates in the entire ethanol industry.
John Kwik, executive vice president of FQT, called the LED setup, “a real technology disruptor for the South American ethanol market.”
Agenor Pavan, chief operations officer of the Sao Martinho plant, said the LED system has allowed the plant to avoid investing in additional steam generation or biomass feedstock volumes needed to power its boilers.
Since commencing operation of its LED system at Three Rivers Energy, FQT has had several interested parties tour the facility to see how the system works and what it looks like, Franko says.
Gevo is already configuring its planned Net-Zero 1 ethanol plant in South Dakota around LED with a focus on driving the CI value as low as possible, Franko says. Once built, the plant will feature—and rely on—FQT’s LED system integrated with mechanical vapor recompression. Having LED at the center of the Net-Zero 1 plant is a testament to the power and ability of its design and FQT’s engineering prowess, Franko says.
“We are engineering [Net-Zero 1’s] LED system for what we believe will be the lowest-CI ethanol plant in the world,” he says.
For existing ethanol producers that know they can benefit from investing in CI-lowering technology, the LED route is clear, according to Franko. The advantages are there, and the CI-reduction has been proven.
Growth in GNS, HPA Markets
Reconfiguring the distillation flow at an ethanol plant can also create more opportunities in the GNS and HPA sectors.
The FQT team says a plant can use additional steam not utilized in the LED system to produce an HPA steam product. Three Rivers Energy was already working with Gojo Industries to supply HPA for hand sanitizer. According to Franko, although GNS capabilities can be added to a plant’s distillation setup at any time, the move might not always make sense without a clear vision of the end market a plant might serve.
Canada-based Greenfield Global and ClearSource, a division of New York-based Western New York Energy, are two ethanol producers with large investments into HPA and GNS.
In 2023, Greenfield Global added 30 million gallons of grain-based HPA production to its Johnstown, Ontario, distillery. The company has a global footprint in ethanol production, along with HPA used for spirits, academia, pharmaceuticals and hygiene customers.
ClearSource has more than 600 feet of HPA distillation spread throughout four towers, the tallest at 168 feet tall. ClearSource produces GNS by distilling the alcohol up to seven times to make what it believes is the purest offering on the market.
EcoEngineers’ Pankonen, formerly a general manager with Greenfield Global’s Minnesota ethanol and HPA operation and a career expert in the biofuels markets, is fully aware of the challenges and opportunities for biofuels producers that participate in the GNS market.
Through his current work assisting producers in employing new low-carbon strategies enabling them to keep pace with market leaders, Pankonen has watched the demand for HPA surge since the pandemic. Now, the demand has moved past hygiene products into other markets like those served by Western New York Energy.
Ethanol producers need to understand offtake agreements like any supplier would, he adds, before they look at investing in the distillation capabilities necessary to bring their product to the 190-plus proof purity level the HPA market demands.
In addition to understanding the HPA market and offtake possibilities, Pankonen points out that producers need to continually refresh their knowledge of CIs. Technologies like FQT’s LED and GNS systems inherently lower the CI score of a plant, but they do require investment. Pankonen and his team are helping producers understand how CI scores are modeled.
“It’s important, no matter the technology or end market, to understand how they will affect the CI score,” he says. Having that confidence and knowledge of a CI score is important to investors and boards, he adds.
“You need to speak to a technology’s CI score like you do to a dried distillers grain product or corn oil or, in this case, HPA production.”
Author: Lisa Hanke
