Method and systems for enhancing oil recovery from ethanol production byproducts
AssigneeYa Global Investments, L.P.
InventorDavid J. Winsness
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Abstract
In one aspect of the invention, a method recovers oil from a concentrated byproduct, such as evaporated thin stillage formed during a dry milling process used for producing ethanol. The method includes forming a concentrate from the byproduct and recovering oil from the concentrate. The step of forming the concentrate may comprise evaporating the byproduct. Further, the step of separating the oil from the concentrate may comprise using a centrifuge and, in particular, a disk stack centrifuge. Other aspects of the invention include related methods and subsystems for recovering oil from thin stillage.
Claims14
A method for recovering oil in a dry milling process for producing ethanol from corn, the method comprising:
- separating a whole stillage byproduct of the dry milling process with a separator into a distillers wet grains fraction, and a thin stillage fraction;
- evaporating the thin stillage fraction in a multi-stage evaporator to remove moisture and form a thin stillage concentrate;
- recovering oil from the thin stillage concentrate prior to a last stage of the multi-stage evaporator with an additional separator;
- and
- further evaporating the thin stillage concentrate to remove additional moisture.
A method for recovering oil in a dry milling process for producing ethanol from corn, the method comprising:
- evaporating a thin stillage fraction to form a thin stillage concentrate with a reduced moisture content relative to the thin stillage fraction;
- recovering oil from the thin stillage concentrate with a horizontal centrifugal three phase decanter;
- and
- further evaporating the thin stillage concentrate to remove additional moisture.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.