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Text Box: COORS Ethanol Plant Tour

Text Box: Submitted by Aspen Coombs On a sunny September afternoon, SWE members and guests including students from the Colorado School of Mines gathered in front of the giant copper kettle outside the Coors Brewery in Golden, Colorado. And so began our educational journey into the ethanol recovery system. In 1995, Total Petroleum teamed up with Coors Brewing Company and Merrick to design an Ethanol Recovery Plant utilizing Coors’ waste streams. The first issue to over come was location; stay within the Coors Brewery grounds or transport to the Total Refinery in Commerce City. The cost of shipping the waste streams to the refinery only to ship the byproduct wastewater back for discharge into Clear Creek made the decision simple. Our tour began in a little spot between Coors’ giant 40mW coal fired power plant and the famous Coors’ greenhouses that provide fresh flowers year around to the visitor center. Steve Wagner, our guide for the afternoon, began with the waste. The ethanol plant utilizes four waste streams from the brewery; the condensate from the yeast drying, waste from bottling overfill, aged discard (from their 8 million barrel refrigerator) and reclaimed beer (the batches that just didn’t come out right). The plant was originally designed to handle 1.5 million gallons of waste but they soon realized this was not enough. So in November of 2005, Merrick doubled the plant capacity, and today at 3 million gallons, the plant is capable of processing all the waste streams. The ethanol recovery process is fairly simple. The “beer” stream flows through a distillation column to reach 95% ethanol and 5% water. The stream is than dehydrated to remove the last 5% of water utilizing molecular sieve technology. The result is 200 proof ASTM fuel grade ethanol that ships to the Suncor Refinery East Plant. Prior to shipping, the ethanol is blend with gasoline to make a 2% gasoline/98% ethanol mixture to meet DOT regulations for transporting. At the refinery, the ethanol stream is added to gasoline for consumption in our cars. The purpose of adding ethanol to gasoline is to boost octane and provide oxygen to the combustion reaction reducing the amount of unburned hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide in the exhaust resulting in cleaner air. Ethanol is also being considered as a cleaner burning alternative fuel. However, ethanol has nowhere near the energy of gasoline and to create significant enough energy would seriously deplete the land available for food production. Back on the tour, our guide took us to the loading facility where a tanker was preparing to haul away a load of product to the refinery. Due to the highly flammable nature of the ethanol, the entire loading area contains numerous alarms and atmospheric sensors as well as dual containment and high-end fire suppression methods. Next stop was the giant yeast drying building, where the used yeast from the fermentation process is dried to a very fine powder and shipped to the local Purina factor. Also located in the yeast drying building is the control room for the plant. The entire plant operates 24/7 by one man with a Delta V Emerson control system. The only major controlling factor for the plant is steam and the operator can speed the process up by adding more or slow it down by adding less. The ethanol recovery process itself is located in a compact outdoor skid that raises three stories in the air. One could almost miss that you were looking at the actually process if the guide had not pointed it out. Despite the somewhat humorous warning “We have worked <188> days without a passerby getting the crazy idea to climb aboard and operate machinery causing serious personal injury” our guide allowed us to climb the three story structure and look at all the pieces and parts up close, including the vacuum pump for the molecular sieve regeneration and the distillation column. The last stop on the tour was the Coors tasting room where members gathered to enjoy a refreshing beverage and great company, ending the afternoon on an enjoyable as well as educational note.

Coors Ethanol Recovery Plant

SWE member Joan Graf enjoying a cool glass of 200 proof ethanol

SWE members gathering in the Coors Tasting Room

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