Wood is one of the most common materials used on the planet - we live in wooden houses, use wooden furniture, burn camp fires, etc.
Wood waste during processing results in nearly 30% of the annual supply of wooden raw material. The cost connected directly to this waste represents 2–8% of the turnover.
Wood wastes are commonly only used to generate technical steam. The mechanical energy demand such as for cutting, sawing, shaving and pressing is mostly provided by diesel generating set and/or power grid. The electricity demand for wood processing industry is substantially high.
As a matter of fact, there are lots of wood waste management technologies. One of the most promising wood management approaches is hydrolysis production together with biotechnological processes. In simple words, hydrolysis production technology is based on wood and annual plants processing into hydrolysis sugar, which can be used to produce:
- hydrochloric acid;
- methanol, ethylene and glycerol;
- yeasts.
Spirit extraction with five column distillers is necessary element in hydrolysis production. Distiller includes braw, eruption, rectification, methanol and etheric columns. Produced technical alcohol can be used as car and rocket fuel, paint dissolvent, medical disinfectant or used for chemical production of ethyl acetate, acetic acid, etc. Industrial use of technical alcohol is limitless.
Nevertheless, hydrolysis production has one big flow—it requires huge resource and energy expenses. Comparing to molasses spirit production, complex hydrolysis plant per 1 bln. dal spirit uses:
- 7.9-8.3 times more energy;
- 3.5 times more materials;
- 4 times more water.
Despite technological simplicity, technical alcohol production is tremendously complicated process that requires huge amount of complicated equipment, and the process itself is performed under high temperatures and pressure.
Periodical hydrolysis plants allow to automate production and are easily adapted to input raw material quality and amount.
Kettlebell control and monitoring system allows to monitor distillation process temperature, thus provides clear mechanism for output quality control.
Here is an example of hydrolyzed ethanol distillation with Kettlebell control and monitoring software usage.
Kettlebell system helps not only to control output quality, but also to simplify distillation facility operators' work, reduce number of wires, provide single facility control point.
To sum up, usage of Kettlebell control and monitoring software in wood processing industry reduces operational efforts of wood waste management, simplifies operators' training process and enables rational resource usage.