THE RE-USE OF STILLAGE WATER IN THE MASHING OF GRAIN AS A MEANS OF ENERGY CONSERVATION

Abstract

The rise in the cost of energy is a major factor in increasing the costs of such distillery processes as the pre-concentration and drying of stillage. Most of the stillage water (70–80%) that would have to be evaporated can instead be separated and used again for mashing, with only the remaining 30–20% being made up with fresh water. Experiments were performed on both laboratory and production scales. The energy saving resulting from this reduced evaporation of water has been calculated to be 3000 t/a heavy fuel oil in the production of 5000 t/a 100% ethanol in a grain distillery.