Challenge:

Bainter Construction, a manufacturer and distributor of grain bin jacking systems, used its expertise in mechanical design to successfully build fermentation equipment. Bainter came to AMI for assistance working out the thermodynamic details of separating a biofuel from solution with water.

Solution:

AMI designed a series of distillation columns to allow alcohol and water separation, generating graphs that show energy use and distillation yields over a range of operating conditions. From these results, Bainter Construction developed a portable distillation column that they plan to use as part of a new product line of farm-scale biofuel machinery.