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Navigation: Main Page - Agroetanol TTD - History

Agroetanol TTD – Dobrovice Distillery History

Agroetanol TTD, a. s. operates the first Czech bioethanol distillery. The unit was built in several stages:

First Stage – 2006 Campaign

The first stage made it possible to produce bioethanol from raw beet juice during the autumn 2006 sugar campaign – from October to mid-December 2006. It also required some process adjustments in the sugar factory itself. An extra raw juice draft was installed at the diffusion station, and mechanical filtration to remove pulp and other solid matter. Piping was built between the sugar factory and the distillery to share steam and other technology fluids common to both processes.

The construction site was located in a former beet-washing water cesspool that had been dried out and excavated. All distillery equipment was installed on that site: fermentation, distillation and dehydration, auxiliary stations, tank-truck dispatching station, all necessary roads and, last but not least, a four-floor building with the switch room, laboratory, control room, personnel locker rooms and showers, administrative offices and an Internal Revenue office.

At the location intended for the fermentation station, a row of impressively voluminous stainless steel tanks started to grow up in a concrete retention pit; the Czech company who built them also connected them by stainless steel piping to the continuous production line. This continuous technology guarantees a stable and very thorough fermentation with hardly any human intervention. The fermentation technology also includes a CO2-recuperation unit. Gasses are extracted out of the fermentation tanks by a fan and then injected into washing columns to be washed with water; the resulting water/alcohol mixture is recycled into the production process, thus reducing evaporation loss.

The heart of the production is made up of the distillation and dehydration stations. Distillation happens in two nearly 40-metre high stainless steel distillation columns that became the distillery view point as soon as they were installed. The entire technology project was drawn up and most of the equipment supplied by the French company Maguin Interis; it has been designed for maximum energy efficiency. Distillation output is composed of four basic products: raw alcohol, stored in a tank corresponding to 1-month production capacity, to be dehydrated afterwards; there are also low grade alcohol and fusel oil dispatched to other companies for further processing, and distillery slops. Distillery slops are a good example of sugar factory/distillery synergy, as distillery slops produced during the sugar campaign do not need to be concentrated to be used as a fertiliser, but are recycled to the sugar-producing process as process water. Cost is thus reduced by the energy that would be necessary for slop concentration.

Dehydration is based on molecular filtration. This simple process achieves excellent results: dehydrated alcohol contains 99.95% of ethanol. Waterless spirit thus produced is first stored in day-production tanks where its quality is checked, then transferred to storage tanks equipped with a retention pit. Waterless spirit is stored under nitrogenous atmosphere to prevent water absorption from the air moisture. Any vaporization from the tanks, together with vaporization from the dispatching station, is captured by an alcohol-vapour recuperation system preventing it to be rejected into the atmosphere. The storage facility also includes a fixed fire-extinguishing system operational even in case of a power failure, and an automatic fire-alarm system. The fire-extinguishing system also covers all production and dispatching stations and provides reliable protection against any fire that might occur. Waste-water treatment is shared with the sugar factory and uses a pre-existing waste-water treatment station and other water-management equipment of the sugar factory.

Second Stage – Since September 2007

The second stage of the project aimed at making the technology work all-year round. The fermentation station was enlarged by extra fermentation tanks, its capacity thus increased, and piping was modified to allow for discontinuous fermentation using black syrup or molasses.

Distillation and dehydration processes were adjusted to improve quality and increase production capacity. However, the most important changes were linked to production outside of sugar production campaign that requires distillery slops to be concentrated. For this reason, two columns were installed at the distillation station to drain some of the water contained in the slops, as well as a system recycling a part of the slops to fermentation.

The largest second-stage investment was about concentrating the extra slops. An 8-body-stage evaporator was installed for the purpose. A black-syrup-storage tank was also built on the sugar factory site to provide sufficient raw material for a year-round operation of the distillery.

  Agroetanol TTD - Dobrovice Distillery Milestones