Reactive Dehydration:

By 2012, KSE, Inc. (KSE) will begin to license its technology and its design data base for commercial applications of an innovative Reactive Dehydration Technology to substantially reduce the energy use for water removal in the manufacture of fuel grade ethanol from corn. Although the immediate application of the new technology is fuel grade ethanol manufacture, the cost, energy consumption, and carbon footprint of evaporation of water is a major impediment to commercialization of nearly all biomass-to-energy projects. In the next year, an integrated pilot plant will be built, suitable for field demonstration of the technology to potential users in the field. After field demonstration, reactive distillation process data and process designs will be completed for this new technology to facilitate large scale design and construction of commercial plants. KSE, Inc. has been awarded a $3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to accelerate commercialization of the new technology. As an SBIR grant, the U.S. government grants all of its commercial rights in the technology to KSE, Inc.

Problem: Reducing the energy use for water removal in the manufacture of fuel-grade ethanol from corn or other biomass materials is paramount to this industry. Converting a fermentation broth containing 5 to 10% ethanol into a fuel grade ethanol containing less than 1% water is energy intensive and the energy requirements for U.S. ethanol plants are extremely high, currently estimated at 220 trillion BTU per year nation-wide.

Description of New Technology: The Reactive Dehydration Technology is intended to substantially replace direct distillation of ethanol from water, consuming markedly less energy.

Impact: Create nearly one billion dollars annually of energy savings

Market Applications: U.S. domestic ethanol production has grown dramatically, from about 5 billion gallons in 2006 to a peak production rate of over 12 billion gallons per year in mid-2008. With the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA2007) and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) providing mandated support for continued strong growth, ethanol production capacity is increasing dramatically.

Technical/Commercial Challenges: This goal of reduced energy consumption is accomplished by adding a novel dehydrating reagent to the wet ethanol, which reacts with water using a catalyst, to convert the water into a gaseous product.