January 2004 – After its outstanding success in the power alcohol sector of last year, GEA Wiegand has smoothly followed the development and has accepted two additional orders for bioethanol plants of a production capacity of 330,000 litres/day each. In this way the engineering company based in Ettlingen has strengthened its top position in the international competition about power alcohol plants.

The plant will produce bioethanol based on state-of-the-art distillation technology. So-called power alcohol can be produced from raw material containing starch. Power alcohol as fuel additive significantly helps to save fossil fuel and reduces the emission of carbon dioxides and carbon monoxides. Moreover, biothenol is used to recover ETBE (ethyl tert-butyl ether), which, instead of carcinogenic MTBE (methyl ter-butyl ether), can be added to the fuel for stabilization of the knock resistance.

The distillation plant consists of double-flow sieve tray columns and downstream molecular sieve. The energy consumption during the production of alcohol is extremely low: Thanks to highly integrated heat combination the energy consumption is several times lower than that of conventional plants.