Christopher Braun
Managing Director
GEA Wiegand GmbH
July 2007 - new success for the technology leader in the field of bio-ethanol.
It gave managing director Dr. Christopher Braun great pleasure when the division president Niels Graugaard handed him over the winner's certificate for this year's innovation competition of Process Engineering Division of GEA Group AG on the international management meeting in Prague. The P-Division of GEA Group AG consists of more than 50 companies with a turnover of more than one billion EURO.
This success was based on the groundbreaking work of Dr. Daniel Bethge and Dipl. Ing. Paul Hildenbrand who once again gave proof of GEA Wiegand's capability to innovation. With the integration of the mechanical vapor recompression into the production process of alcohol they succeeded in a quantum jump.
GEA Wiegand applied for a patent for this process which reduces energy consumption for the production of alcohol by another two-digit percentage. This is of particular interest for the application in the field of bio-ethanol. Apart from the enormous cost saving, the contribution to climate protection is considerable. Projected to plants with an annual alcohol production capacity of 100,000 tons which are usual today this implies a reduction of more than 15 million kg of CO2 per year for each of such plants.