BGW Sp zoo, a Polish ethanol producer, is to install a Whitefox ICE membrane dehydration system from Whitefox Technologies at its 108 million litres per year plant in Rabczyn, Poland.

The Whitefox system is designed to produce up to 400 000 litres per day of anhydrous ethanol. The project is due to start up towards the end of this year and will be the first large-scale Whitefox ICE membrane solution in Europe.

Whitefox ICE is a membrane-based technology solution that dehydrates water-rich recycle streams to produce high-purity ethanol. The technology is already operating in eight US ethanol facilities, eliminating recycle streams from molecular sieves to improve energy consumption, carbon emissions and operational costs.

“Since we first purchased the distillery in Rabczyn in 2002 we have undertaken several modernisation initiatives to create a state-of-the-art plant,” said Bartosz Walkowiak, BGW president and CEO. “Whitefox’s membrane solution will help us take a further leap towards our overall goal to produce the most energy efficient ethanol in Poland.”

“We started to work on this solution with Bartosz and his team over a year ago and together we developed an advanced solution to help BGW set a new standard in ethanol production,” explained Gillian Harrison, CEO of Whitefox Technologies. “It will also be the first Whitefox ICE solution to directly dehydrate ethanol from 50% to 99.9% in the main production stream. At Whitefox we are focused on using our membrane separation technology to help industry address the challenges of meeting Europe’s NetZero targets.”