A DEER’s Small Footprint Creates Big Change

The Challenge

Ethanol plants fight the battle between improving efficiency while looking out for the planet. States like California reward companies that find ways to reduce the carbon footprint left by processing plants. That’s where Florida-based Bioleap Inc. steps in with the goal of maximizing operating capacity by focusing on steam limited operations, as you might find in the Ethanol or chemical and grain processing industries. With Bioleap’s revolutionary DEER system, these facilities can reuse energy, thereby reducing their carbon footprint. The challenge for Bioleap was finding an energy bank manufacturing partner that could keep up with the high demand for their systems and timelines.

“That energy bank was the limiting component for our systems, at least with the timeline we had. The other components are off the shelf items. It’s a complex piece of equipment that we need someone to manufacture, it’s not going to be very quick.” said Nathan Mitchell, Vice President at the technical solutions company.

The Journey

The idea behind Bioleap’s concept is to work like your dryer at home.

“Similar to a clothes dryer, the exhaust is wasted energy. The challenge is finding a way to capture and reuse that energy to make clean, boiler-quality steam that recirculates through your biorefinery,” said Nathan.

Bioleap saw the need for this energy recapture system when an employee was conducting an energy audit for a contracted ethanol plant. He realized all the benefits of recovering and reusing the steam exhaust.

“One of the main benefits of our system is that a lot of these steam-limited plants would install an additional boiler to produce more steam and increase the production of ethanol. So not only does our system recover energy, but it also produces more steam with that energy,” said Nathan.

They began focusing on these steam-limited facilities and ended up designing a Dryer Exhaust Energy Recovery (DEER) system that captures the wasted steam through energy banks and reuses the energy to improve efficiencies in the process. This not only maximizes the steam capacity—which increases output without the need for additional boilers—but also reduces steam-related bottlenecks.

The Solution

As word spread about the DEER system and its capabilities, Bioleap needed an energy bank manufacturing partner who could meet the high demand.

“When Bioleap approached us with the opportunity to partner with them to manufacture these heat exchangers, we knew our experience, quality, and scalability would be a perfect fit,” said Lance Briggs, Global Heat Transfer Sales Manager at Paul Mueller Company. “We are always excited to partner with other groups working to create quality for life. Bioleap's design and vision was a perfect match for our product's efficiency, our experience, and our manufacturing excellence.”

 “We needed a supplier that could keep up with our timelines and really understood heat transfer at such high temperatures. It’s a critical piece, to exchange heat from one form to another,” said Nathan. “On the visit to Paul Mueller Company, we were impressed with their knowledge and manufacturing process, plus the ability to scale.”

The Results

The DEER system did more than improve overall efficiency for Bioleap’s customers—it paid for itself quickly, grew profits, and gave them a competitive advantage.

“We guarantee the plant's reduction in natural gas consumption. That is in our contract, which allows the plant to accurately calculate their ROI,” said Nathan.

With an approximately 20% reduction in natural gas consumption and process water savings of 80-150 gallons per minute, that ROI has proven out.

As technology develops, so do ways of saving extra money in your process. Ethanol refineries, as well as chemical and grain processing plants, can find those savings with the DEER system, saving millions of dollars a year in natural gas while also seeing a 10% growth in production.

“These plants are looking for a good return on their investment, and that is something we can guarantee in our contract; moreover, our DEER system is low risk, proven, and easy to operate,” said Nathan. We have that system, and with Mueller’s energy banks, we can meet the demand so our customers start saving money right away, after installation.

“We have decades of experience building the highest quality heat transfer equipment, and Bioleap needs a condenser in their system that has to be delivered on time and work exactly as designed. Partnering together was an excellent opportunity for both of our teams,” said Lance.