Booker Noe, Boston KY, USA

The Booker Noe distillery is the largest of its kind in the US state of Kentucky. To boost its efficiency, profitability and environmental performance, it has been expanded with the help of Kanadevia Inova’s integrated resource recovery solutions.

The objective was to capitalise on the economic and environmental potential of the stillage produced in the distillation process. With the Kanadevia Inova systems, this organic waste is now converted into a number of valuable resources, including biogas, produced by digesting the stillage and then cleaned and upgraded to biomethane for use to run the distillery. The digestion process also yields a carbon-negative, fossil-fuel-free by-product that can be used to produce fertiliser – an additional revenue stream.

Up to 1 million short tons (907,000 metric tons) of distillery stillage are treated every year in a total of eight 9,000 m³ digesters. In a downstream pressureless amine scrubber upgrading facility, 6,900 Nm³/h (4,300 SCFM) of biogas are being cleaned, compressed and then fed back into the production cycle as the energy carrier biomethane/RNG. This is used by the distiller supplying the stillage to help reduce GHG emissions by up to 50%.

• Type of waste: Spent stillage (whiskey mash) from the distilling process

• Wet AD digester: 9,000 m³ steel digester

• Type of upgrader: A Series, XL Model, 6,900 Nm3/h (4,300 SCFM)

• No. of digesters: : 8 x 9,000 m³ tanks (5 primary digesters + 3 secondary digesters)

• Biomethane produced: up to 4,100 Nm³/a (2,500 SCFM)

• Electricity generated: 18.3 MW electrical generation capacity equivalent for boiler operations

• Liquid output material: up to 2,100 t/d (2,300 short tons/d)