Web exclusive posted July 8, 2008 at 4:29 p.m. CST

Traditionally, managing the coproducts from the spirits manufacturing industry has been energy intensive and costly, often creating a bottleneck in the production process.

In an effort to address this problem, Ecovation Inc., a division of Ecolab Inc., has designed and built a proprietary whole stillage treatment solution at the Maker's Mark Distillery in Loretto, Ky.

Maker's Mark Distillery will utilize Ecovation's proprietary anaerobic digestion technology, called Mobilized Film Technology, to effectively recycle its waste streams and generate biogas for renewable energy and steam for its boilers.

Commissioned in April, a ribbon cutting event was held at the Maker's Mark Distillery on July 1 to celebrate the official operation of the technology.

According to Mark Motylewski, vice president of global accounts for Ecovation, the technology will anaerobically treat the liquid portion of the whole stillage and process waters produced during bourbon-making. The process will generate up to 165 million British thermal units (Btu) of methane-rich biogas that will offset between 20 to 25 percent of the facility's natural gas consumption.

"It's a fixed-film, pulsed fluidized bed anaerobic digestion technology," Motylewski said, who sold the project to Maker's Mark Distillery on behalf of Ecovation and oversaw the client relationships during the four years of project development. "We're separating the grains out much like the distilleries do with a centrifuge, but we use a screw-press instead. The technology also has an aerobic polishing treatment process to take out nitrogen compounds in the effluent that gets discharged."

By utilizing Ecovation's anaerobic digestion technology, Motylewski said the system is much more energy-efficient and cost-effective than traditional, more energy-intensive centrifuges and evaporators that are used to dewater and then dry the "cake" from the distillation process. He added that the process will also produce a wet cake which will be sold as an animal feed "at a healthy profit and will be produced at a lower cost" providing a value-added revenue stream for Maker's Mark Distillery.

The state-of-the-art Ecovation technology is the first of its kind for treating thin stillage in the bourbon industry. Ecovation, which was acquired by Ecolab in February, is looking to develop similar anaerobic digestion systems for scotch distilleries in the United Kingdom and a rum distillery in the Caribbean, Motylewski said.

"Once we complete the due diligence and prove out the technology, we'll hopefully convince other spirit distilleries of the benefits of this process and move forward with their projects as well," he added.

Meanwhile, Motylewski is hopeful that Ecovation's anaerobic digestion technology at Maker's Mark Distillery will serve as a prototype for other distilleries.

"We hope this will be the future for distilleries," he said. "As distilleries look to replace older, less efficient assets and as they look to more energy efficient solutions we hope this will be the answer for them."