If you don't mind the product being somewhat wet when it is done, use steam explosion processing. The material is heated with steam in a pressure vessel then the vessel is evacuated quickly causing an explosion in the cell walls.

Contact Stake Technology in Canada if the process is of interest. ■

If wet milling suites your needs, General Kinematics will be able to help you achieve your goals. Our Vibra-Drum can process material in the sub micron range and material can be spray dried to the desired moisture.

Best Regards,

Todd

www.generalkinematics.com ■

The Eirich centrifugal mill type SVZ showed its capability for the fine grinding of wet corn silage in several tests. A fibrous structure with a d50 of about 1000 µm could be achieved from input material with several centimeters without any pre-drying the product at very low energy consumptions at about 10 kWh/t.

Of course a final fineness of several microns can only be achieved in wet grinding with a high energy consumption. The questions which has to be stated than is the economy of the process? Can you get out much more energy from the ground product than is used for grinding?

Stefan Gerl

stefan.gerl@eirich.de

www.eirich.com ■

Dear ahto555,

We manufacture and market Air-Classified Milling Systems and ancillary process equipment for pulverizing and sizing your material to your specification. This is a very energy efficient and quality process for this application. We recently demonstrated such success in a similar application for tobacco feedstock, which is also a long aspect ratio fiber, milling to ~d99 = 25 micrometers.

We have been in business for over 17 years and our staff has over 50 years of combined experience sizing materials. Please visit our website at www.cms-can.com and/or feel free to contact me via e-mail, telephone or Skype to establish a Lab Trial leading to a formal Proposal. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Kevin Layton

Sales Manager - CMS

Columbus, Ohio USA

Main: 1+419.450.4404

E-mail: klayton@insight.rr.com

Skype: kevinlayton

Classifier Milling Systems

35 Van Kirk Drive, Unit #17

Brampton, Ontario, Canada L7A 1A5

Web: www.cms-can.com ■

At the moment it seems the main issue is to identify the required particle size for a positive influence on the fermentation process. The optimum effectivity for the fermentation is certainly a function of particle size, particle structure and enzymes activity. Hosokawa Alpine has carried out a number of trials on fine grinding (wet base and dry base) in a typical particle range of 600 micron to 100 micron.

There are some studies available on grinding of fibre ingredients like Cellulose, Lignin or Pentosan and the influence of the grinding on the fermentation process. As far as we know, none of these processes are realized under large production scale.

If you consider wet grinding, the energy for milling is lower, but you need to take into consideration that the product needs to be dried (which will be additional 62 kWh for evaporation of 100 kg of water); additionally, water in the fermentation process does not have a positive effect!

For dry grinding, more energy for milling is required. To achieve a particle size with straw of 100 micron, you need appr. 300 kWh/t.

Novozymes Biotech in Davis/California provides enzymes for fermentation (see BioTimes 3/2001).

We can offer trials in our test station in Germany or the US on classifier mills. See www.alpinehosokawa.com or www.hmicronpowder.com.

■

Please visit http://fasc.net to learn about the KDS Micronex™ from First American Scientific Corp.

Fine grinding of biomass is what they do. They can tune their machine to various moisture contents, but drying while grinding is what they do most efficiently.

They are currently involved in a number of projects in the biomass to ethanol arena.

Testing can determine if this machine will meet your requirements, but they may already have data for your feedstock.

I am a shareholder of FASC stock. ■