INDUSTRIES

Model Predictive Control & Optimization

Pavilion’s solution to biofuels operational challenges is non-disruptive, highly-tested and delivers value every day. With the model-predictive control solutions currently installed in over forty ethanol facilities worldwide directly changing control system targets, plants are consistently and systematically managed and are actively driven to the best performance of target goals. Since very little, if any, additional equipment is installed and all the controllers act supervisory to an existing control system, no plant outages are required and production and performance is not impacted during installation.

Quality Soft Sensors

Pavilion provides real-time quality estimators to provide distillers grain moisture, slurry solids, syrup solids, reflux proof, ethanol or dextrose concentrations and other laboratory samples as a real-time feedback for direct quality control. Pavilion is the world leading supplier of highly accurate virtual sensors, often where no online analyzer exists.  When the process is controlled to target, quality is better and over-processing or give-away is minimized.

Distillation and Sieve Solution

Pavilion provides simultaneous, coordinated control across distillation and molecular sieve trains. This includes management of distillation and sieve quality, energy consumption and heat recovery, as well as compensating for recycle streams or changes in associated units that impact distillation and sieve quality.

  • Reduce variability on anhydrous and distilled alcohol product quality and base losses > 35 percent
  • Reduce distillation and sieve energy costs 4-8% per unit of beer feed or alcohol produced
  • Increase distillation and sieve processing capacity 5-10%

DDGS Dryer and Stillage Management Solution

This solution includes equipment to dry and process stillage streams from a whole stillage tank through dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS). Pavilion has vast experience providing control solutions on a broad range of dryer or evaporator designs and products. Stillage management controls critical handles including dryer heat, syrup flows, centrifuge rates and available controllers to improve management of steam generation.

  • Reduce energy costs 4-6% per ton of distiller grain products
  • Increase distillers grain yield 1-2%
  • Stabilize dryer and evaporator operations and increase stillage capacity 5-12%

Slurry/Water Balance

The first step in stabilizing fermentation is to stabilize feed quality. The slurry/water balance solution controls mills, cook water, backset, fresh water rates and alpha amylase dosing where available. This provides a consistently liquefied, concentrated fermentation mash, while achieving gap control targets to bring plant-wide rates up and down based on current operating targets. Pumping, milling, viscosity and a broad variety of operational limits across the front-end of the ethanol plant are observed and enforced.

  • Reduce slurry and liquefaction solids variability 35-65%
  • Reduce pH and cook temperature variability > 35%
  • Increase fermentation yields by stabilizing the most critical disturbances to day-to-day fermenter operations
  • Increase milling and cook capacity 5-12%

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Batch Fermentation

Fermentation is at the heart of an ethanol plant and Pavilion’s models continuously estimate, sense and respond to optimize yeast conditions and performance across each batch. This solution includes highly-refined and tested, real-time fermentation control and concentration inferential models (Soft Sensors) that control and optimally stage glucoamylase addition and temperature staging.

  • Increase fermentation and plant yields 2-5%
  • Maximize and stabilize drop alcohol concentrations
  • Manage yields consistently as capacity (or batch time) is increased or decreased

Plant-wide Optimization

Because of the cyclical economic nature of ethanol plants, today’s most cost-effective operation is not always the same as next month’s. A key benefit of having accurate plant capability models, including most particularly the batch fermentation yield model, is that trade-offs between increasing capacity or increasing yields, once the best performance is reached, can be calculated. As the margin between grain and biofuels changes, or as this margin is impacted by changing energy prices, the most profitable operating rate changes. Pavilion’s plant-wide optimization solution incorporates these and other performance models with economic models driven by current pricing. It provides the options to evaluate the impact on a business plan, along with the ability to drive real-time rates to optimize current economics. Leveraging these models, economic operational decisions can be more informed and better justified with this insight.

  • Know weeks in advance what rate or targets should be running.
  • Understand the impact of commodity decisions and options.
  • Understand the impact of best-case and worst case future scenarios for commodity pricing.
  • Decide and manage operations to trade-off existing delivery or consumption commitments versus maximizing weekly or monthly operational profits.

Download the Biofuels Industry Solution brochure

Click here to visit our Ethanol Value Calculator to see for yourself how Pavilion's Biofuels Solution can bring immediate boost to your bottom line.

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