building the business

What our site will look like

our site

Core Process

1. Wheat Storage: 1500 tonnes of wheat can be stored in each of the six silos; approx. 3 days storage in total at full throughput.
2. Wheat Milling: The wheat is screened and milled into wholemeal flour.
3. Liquefaction: The flour is mixed with water to form a slurry that is then ‘cooked’ with steam and treated with enzymes to break the long chained starch molecules into fermentable sugars, such as sucrose & glucose.
4. Fermenters: These are 8 fermenting tanks, each with a capacity of 4400m3. This is a batch process with each cycle lasting 58 hours. Yeast is then added to the ‘mash’ from liquefaction and converts sugars into ethanol to produce a ‘beer’ of 12% alcohol strength.
5. Distillation Evaporation & MSDH: This takes ’beer’ from 12% ethanol through the distillation and brings it to 96% concentration. Molecular Sieve Dehydration (MSDH) then further dries the ethanol to 99.7%. Evaporation efficiently concentrates the separated animal feed syrup from 5% solids to 30%, which is then added to the distillers grains prior to drying or sold as a product. Distillation, Evaporation, and MSDH are fully integrated to maximise the energy efficiency of the plant.
6. Ethanol Storage & Loading: 2 tanks provide 10,000 tonnes of ethanol storage. Vivergo also has 2 loading bays and aims for each 37000 litre road tanker to be loaded with ethanol in 30 minutes. There is also the capability to despatch 100% of ethanol production onto ships on the river Humber, via the jetty at Saltend.
7. Dryers: 3 hot air dryers have a production capacity of 55 tonnes per hour, creating 440,000 tonnes of high protein Dried Distillers Grains & Solubles (DDGS).
8. WDG Silos: These silos hold Wet Distillers Grain (WDG) another animal feed product, ready for despatch.
9. Pelletising: There are 4 machines which press the DDGS meal through the die to produce the high density animal feed pellet.
10. DDGS Storage: This warehouse can store 3500 tonnes of DDGS pellets, approximately 3 days production. Lorries are loaded for despatch using front loading shovels.

Ancillaries

11. Chemical Storage: Yeast and enzymes are stored here, as well as process additives which optimise efficiency.
12. Clean steam generator & air compressors: This area compresses air for control valves and instrumentation. Clean steam is generated where it is needed for the flour cooking.
13. Process water treatment plant: This maximises the efficient use of water within the Plant. Water condensed and collected from the core process is cleaned to a hygienic quality to allow it to be reused/recycled in the process.
14. Cooling Towers: 4 evaporative cooling towers that provide cooling for fermentation and distillation.