PROJECT FOR WASTES DISPOSAL AND ZERO FUEL COST FOR THE CORN SEED PRODUCTION

Ing. Roberto Gaietta, CO.M.I.GE. s.r.l.- PAVIA - comige@comige.it - www.comige.it - www.energymais.info

After some visit in Argentina and an examination of the problems of the big corn seed producers, we developed a study to reach the following goals.

THE GOALS

  1. Elimination of the wastes produced by the corn seed production process (cobs, leaves, expired coated corn seeds) that represent a logistic effort, of space and considerable costs for disposal, and in presence or pending environmental regulations that will force soon anyway to remove, with a further increase in costs.
  2. Zero fossil fuel consumption used for drying process (either in view of future price increases that any sudden supply difficulties).

THE STATE OF THE ART

The technical solutions adopted to date are mainly:

  1. The old technologies based on the well-known classic >COMBUSTION, but for this big quantity of wastes are necessary furnaces with fixed or mobile grate, very big and expensive. Moreover this is a combustion technology often INCOMPLETE, with high quantity of pollutants, and many bottom and flying ashes, with clinker formation.
  2. The new technologies based on the GASIFICATION, but more complex and expensive. Also this technology is not exempt by the formation of pollutants and wastes to be disposed.
  3. The new technologies based on the BIOGAS, but are needed plants of very big dimensions, with complex management and expensive. Also in this plants there are wastes to be disposed.

In any case, the above technologies were realized above all to produce electric energy, because if produced by renewables in Europe is sold at high incentivized tariffs , without any consideration to the thermal energy produced, that is normally dispersed, but in this case it is very important because gives big and immediate benefits.

For the production of the only THERMAL ENERGY, with some simple search on the web, we can find many experiments for the combustion of wastes from corn cultivation (above all, corncobs).

Apart from many theoretical researches, some experiments were made in the past history.

SOME IMPORTANT EXPERIMENTS

All these experiments had amazing expectations, but no one really had positive results, given that to date none of the above seed companies applied the above described plants in its factories, because they met the following problems, characteristic of those technologies:

  1. Production of high quantity of pollutant smokes (solvable with expensive purification plants to avoid the air pollution and with heat exchangers to avoid the cereals pollution)
  2. Production of high quantity of ashes and clinker (cause of frequent maintenance and downtown)
  3. Difficulty to control the heating quantity production (cause of drying temperature difficult to control)
  4. Difficulty to burn wastes with high moisture
  5. High complexity, large space required, high cost of installation and management

THE "ENERGYMAIS" TECHNOLOGY

The new "ENERGYMAIS" technology is certainly much easier, less expensive and more efficient.

We can obtain the following advantages:

  1. Pollutant smokes in negligible quantity, with the possibility to enter the smokes into the drying cereals, without losing quality
  2. Low quantity of bottom ashes (1% - 2%) and complete absence of clinker
  3. Accurate control of drying air temperature (+/- 1°C)
  4. With high moisture seconds (corn leaves) the application of the new technology "FLASH DRYER" allows to obtain a fast drying before sending them to the combustion.
  5. Simple construction, low space required, low management cost.