The client, headquartered in Italy, developed and patented an innovative process to obtain Bioethanol of Second Generation (Second Generation means that the feedstock is a byproduct of food and agricultural industry).

This is a key sector of the world market because it offers the possibility to find alternative fuels to oil.

At a later stage, our partner, installed a complete plant -including also the dewatering phase – to a Brazilian company producing first and second generation Bioethanol.

The customer involved Diemme^® Filtration to deal with some challenges with the previous existing dewatering equipment which could not meet the required performances. The close cooperation generated a positive outcome in terms of capacities and cake moisture.

One important factor was the dewatering of the suspension generated at the bottom of the distillation column where the solids are mainly lignin. Achieving a low moisture in the cake was an important benefit: this could be directly burned to obtain electric power, avoiding a further drying step.

This result provided significant savings in terms of operational cost for the whole industrial plant.