Challenges for Biofuels Producers

Biofuels producers face a number of challenges in today’s changing landscape.  

• Aging control technology
  Many ethanol facilities are sitting on aging distributed control systems that are difficult and expensive to service, lack flexibility, and require many days and multiple steps to provide access to process data. How do you make sure you take advantage of contemporary technology to give you real-time data access and a step up on your competitors? How do you insure you can stay current as technology changes?

• Need for increased efficiency
  Ten years ago, many ethanol plants were small operations designed for crop consumption. Today’s new plants are being built as investments, and profit is a primary goal. Boosting efficiency, reducing downtime and reducing costs become essential. But how do you keep track of your data, and how do you make sure you can view it in the proper context to make the changes necessary to become the lowest-cost producer?

• Larger plants
  As ethanol and biodiesel become big business, organizations are building larger plants to take advantage of economies of scale. But with greater size comes increased complexity. How do you manage feedstock sources, maintain quality and maximize efficiency in a larger operation?

• Multiple plants
  As the biofuels industry grows, organizations are no longer building and operating a single plant, but five or six plants in various locations. How can centralized management keep track of production at disparate locations and benchmark performances? And how can they use that information to create a knowledge base that benefits all their facilities, implementing best practices across their entire enterprise?

• Multiple feedstocks
  The traditional feedstocks for ethanol have been corn and sugarcane. But new advances in technology have given producers more options. New feedstocks like switchgrass, corn stalks, cellulose and bagasse offer significant opportunities, but significant learning curves as well. What’s more, many producers now want the agility to use multiple feedstocks in the same plant. How do you manage your recipes, and how do you maintain consistency and quality?

GE Fanuc Can Help

For Biofuels producers, GE Fanuc offers information systems and process control solutions that can help you overcome these challenges. With an installed base in more than 50 ethanol and biodiesel plants around the world, dedicated internal resources and a global network of expert integrators, we’ve got the industry experience and domain expertise to implement a scalable, flexible solution that’s customized to your current needs, and that can grow and change as you move into the future.

• Real-time data access and analysis
  Our Production Management software provides access to real-time and historical information with role-based, contextual views that allow improved decision-making. With a comprehensive view of overall equipment efficiency, an understanding of production bottlenecks, and a direct link between lab results and production parameters, you can improve recipes and drill down to understand the root causes of problems.

• Scalability and translatability
  GE Fanuc automation and data solutions can be easily scaled up or down to fit operations of any size. And process configurations can be used in multiple plants with minimal reconfiguration, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. You’re able to benchmark and compare performances across plants and view them all from a central location, so you can take advantages of efficiencies and improve overall performance.

• Increased efficiency
  With GE Fanuc Solutions, you can achieve timely and precise materials staging, increased efficiency of asset use, and reduced downtime. You’ll find that you can increase yield and control variations, so you can make more product with the same equipment, meaning greater profitability.

• Cost-effective control systems
  Proficy Process Systems is an integrated hardware and software solution that provides complete process control for all areas of your plant -- continuous, batch and hybrid processes. Because it was developed with a commitment to openness, flexibility and modularity, you can automate a single area or your entire plant, depending on your needs. It also means you can change and modify your process to accommodate new feedstocks, new formulas, or other changes. It can also handle your boilers, eliminating the need for another process control system for your co-generation needs.