A DEER’s Small Footprint Creates Big Change

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.

As word got out about the DEER system and its capabilities, Bioleap needed an energy bank manufacturing partner who could keep up with their 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 DEER system did more than improve overall efficiency for Bioleap’s customers – It paid for itself quickly, grew profits and put them at 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 approximately 20% reduction in natural gas consumption, and process water savings of 80-150 gallons per minute, that ROI has proved 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,” 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 has a need for 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. 

If you have a similar process or want to know if Temp-Plate® would work on your application, contact us here to talk with a heat transfer expert. To see another way our versatile Temp-Plate can be used with OEM’s, click here.