In operation since 2013: burning spent wet marc, it produce saturated steam used to distil Ethanol and produce Tartaric Acid from the same grape’s by-products supplied by the local wineries.
Founded in 1991 by Giovanni Randi, the Australian Tartaric Products quickly grew until becom-ing Australia’s largest manufacturer and supplier of Tartaric Acid. At its plant in Colignan, in Victoria state, ATP also manufactures food grade Ethanol, producing and selling natural products only. ATP is part of the Randi Group, which has a number of similar operations both in Italy and America.
A major ingredient in wine-making, the Tartaric Acid produced in the Mildura region is sold mainly to Australian wineries, with smaller quantities taken up by pharmaceutical companies and food manufacturers. Food grade spirit is also sold both to Australian wineries and interna-tionally to be used in wine fortification and brandy production.
Located near the desert, not far from splendid vineyards and fruit orchards, the facility processes considerable volumes of grape marc, grape lees, centrifuged by-products created from the wine making process, producing a completely natural product from material which would otherwise go into landfill.
The company collects nearly 50,000 T/year of these waste from the Sunraysia, Riverland, Riverina and Barossa Valley wine growing regions and processes them during the whole year also when wine-making activities end.
A major cost in their industrial process is represented by the fuel required to produce the steam demanded by the distillation process. Due to their distance from gas networks, ATP is forced to buy liquid Propane in tank trucks to feed their steam-producing boilers. This cost is rising every year, and a proper solution had to be found. Taking advantage of the vast experi-ence capitalised by the Randi Group in their Italian Villapana factory in Faenza —where a Cannon Bono Sistemi thermal plant generates electricity and steam from the same type of waste —ATP commissioned again a similar solution.
A Dedicated Solution
The solution designed for ATP produces 12 t/h of saturated steam at 10 bar and 184 °C, used to distil Ethanol and produce Tartaric Acid: in those periods of the year when demand for process is lower, the produced steam drives an ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) able to generate up to 400 kW of electricity, for factory internal consumption.
The system supplied by Cannon Bono Sistemi (www.bono.it) includes:
• A network of conveyors to transport the wet biomass,
• An automatic batch dosing system to feed the marcs to the combustion grid,
• A double-stage preheater, to increase the combustion air temperature up to 220°,
• A step-moving grate combustion system, specially designed for wet solid fuel,
• Two radiant chambers (post-combustion and inversion) for the flue gas,
• A two-drum evaporator to heat up water and produce saturated steam at 184°C,
• Three dedicated economisers, to reduce flue gas temperature and maximise heat recovery,
• A deaerator, to remove gas from recycled hot water and fresh water refills,
• Flue gas treatment cyclone and baghouse filter, to avoid emissions of particulate,
• A centralised ash recovery system, collecting them from several points of the thermal plant,
• A 25-meter high chimney for the spent fumes,
• A complete electronic control for the whole combustion process,
• Design and engineering of steam and water piping network for the whole factory.
Completely designed and built in Italy, the complex plant was shipped in October 2012 (in forty 40-feet containers and four huge pre-built elements) from the harbour of Genoa. When it arrived on site in Australia, a 10-specialists staff flew in for the assembly work.
