Ethanol plant's waste heat going to greenhouse

Thursday, December 6, 2012

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Hot water and carbon dioxide (CO2) will soon be flowing between an ethanol plant on one side of Bloomfield Road in southwest Chatham, to a greenhouse on the other, adding value to both enterprises.

The connection between Cedarline Greenhouses and GreenField Ethanol is expected to result in a 40 per cent reduction in heating costs for the 22.5-acre tomato greenhouse operation which could, over 10 years, be expanded to 90 acres depending on market demand.

Greg Devries, CEO of Cedarline, says the first part of the connection between the two enterprises will be to deliver surplus CO2 to the greenhouse after the first crop is planted in July 2013.  The second phase of the connection will be adding heat and that will take a little longer, coming on stream in 2014 or 2015.

Angelo Ligori, plant manager of the Chatham GreenField plant, says the heat will be drawn from steam coming off dryers that now goes up a large stack.

“We have to condense it, so we’re going to be sending them hot water,” Ligori says. “Basically, we have to come up with a big hot water heat exchanger.” He says they will deliver hot water to Cedarline and, once the greenhouse has drawn off the heat, cooled water will be returned to the ethanol plant to be reused. The CO2 is a natural byproduct of the fermenting process used to produce ethanol.

Construction has started on the greenhouse and Devries is hoping they will make their target to plant tomatoes in July 2013. That crop will begin to come off in late August or early September.

While they are planning to take heat and CO2 from the ethanol plant, they are building a facility which they can run without outside support.

“The whole greenhouse structure will be conventional,” Devries says. If there is a shutdown at the ethanol plant, he says, they will be able to operate the greenhouse normally using their own CO2 recovery and natural gas boiler systems.

“Our plan,” Devries says, “is to commission the whole system; make sure the heating works and all that stuff, get our staff trained.” The July crop will be a half crop and they hope to plant a full crop at the end of 2013. Expansion, when markets warrant it, Devries says, will be in increments of 22.5 acres of greenhouse up to 90 acres and could be completed in 10 years. That timeline, he says, can be condensed or extended.

“We have a 10-year plan and, in the greenhouse world, you have to make sure there is a market. It is always a growing market but there are things that can play into it.” This year, for example, he says there was too much product and prices were down.

Initially, the greenhouse will produce vine tomatoes but they could add other varieties later. They expect to produce 21 million kilograms of tomatoes annually.

Cedarline comes to the project with nine years of greenhouse experience. Their 16-acre greenhouse in Dresden produces bell peppers. Devries says potential savings of 40 per cent on their annual heating bill is significant. Heating, he says, is a major cost for greenhouse operators, accounting for 40 per cent of operating costs –– about five per cent more than labour costs.

The greenhouse project, a $65 million venture, is getting $3.2 million in funding from the Ontario government.

While the cost of engineering and creating the infrastructure and making the connections between the two plants has not been released, Ligori says it is a multi-million-dollar investment “on both sides.” BF