lssue date: 2008.09.25

Regarding to the state environmental policy, Xylose manufacturers are facing big pressure on environmental protection work to win from the competitions, and also are encouraged to develop an energy-saving & emission reduction and recycling economic mode. To implement the cleaning process in Xylose production, it well helps the manufacturer to realize the Zero emission from reducing the pollution and also ensuring to fully meet the emission standards. The implementation of a cleaning production is the necessary requirement of enterprise development and also the certain choice of marketing competitions.
Xylose production uses the agricultural waste “corncob” as the raw material, and Xylose is one kind of functional sugar alcohol product made through many processes including hydrolyze, decolor, purify, concentrate, crystal, centrifugal, drying and etc. During the production, the resources like vitriol, hydrochloric acid, liquid alkali, active carbon are often used and same time the effluent waste water and residue also badly pollute the environment. If the manufacturers do not deal with the pollution seriously, the whole Xylose industry will then be badly influenced, and so the implementation of the cleaning process has very practical significance.

Xylose is a broadly used functional sugar alcohol, and is the main raw material to produce Xylitol. The flavor and sweetness is similar to glucose, and can also improve the taste of the sweet food to well reduce the after taste. As Xylose can control the complex activity of glycerin, neutral fat and free fatty acid, it can well control weight and avoid getting fat. And Xylose will not be used by the oral bacteria, has some physiological functions as the fibre from the meal, it matches well with food and will show good health care effect when being added few in the food as one kind of the food additive. When Xylose is taken with calcium, then it is good to improve the absorptivity and reservation of calcium in the body, and same time can prevent constipation. Because Xylose has so many advantages, many manufacturers start the production and R&D by the development of human being’s health concept.

In the Polyols industry development plan listed in the state “11th Five-year Plan”, the energy-saving and emission reduction are the most important targets, the manufacturers have to promote the further-process and integrated utilization of resources, and build up a new mode of recycling development, to meet the state effluent standards of three wastes to polyols manufacturers. The target is to reduce 20% of energy consumption per unit output value, reduce 30% of water per unit industrial added value, reduce 10% of total effluent amount of main waste pollutions, and increase up to 80% of the utilization rate of industrial solid waste.

To meet with the energy-saving requirements of polyols production listed in state “11th Five-year plan”, Futaste enhances the technology investment and always emphases on energy-saving work, promotes technology innovation of recycling economic together with Xylose and Xylitol production and encourage all-round cleaning production process, to better improve the quality control on each manufacture procedures and realize a closed recycling way during main products production; fully use waste water and residue, to realize zero-waste-emission and build up an efficient recycling-economic mode.

Cleaning process, means to eliminate the poisonous materials during the production, and same time save the resources & energy, and also reduce the total amount of wastes; if considering from the product side, then means to eliminate the harmful effects from whole procedures of raw material abstraction to final products; if considering from the service side, then means to combine the environmental factor into whole product design and production. The main principle of “Cleaning process” is to “Energy-saving, consumption-reduction, pollution-decrease and profit-increase”. Cleaning process is a new environmental strategy focused on resources-saving comparing with the traditional pollution-control strategy, and is a positive transfer of the whole concept on environmental protection activity from passive to initiative. The cleaning process of Futaste mainly shows in following aspects:

Clean resources means to use non-polluted or less-polluted resources or energy instead of high-polluted and shortage ones. And Futaste develops a new way to produce green fuel by using the big amount of Xylose residue as raw material. Xylose residue contains lots of plant fibrin and lignose, and it is a good raw material to make fibre ethanol. Futaste together with Shandong food fermentation industry academe successfully discover the methods, more than 80% fibrin glucose yield rate from Xylose residue by enzymolysis, and can produce 1 ton fuel enthanol from 3.8 tons Xylose residue. The waste water from the alcoholic fermentation can also be recycling use, to reduce the treatment procedures to waste water and also obtain obvious environmental benefit.
The project is not only to fully use the Xylose residue, but also resolve the problems on dealing with the residue and same time promote local agricultural industry development and further-process of agricultural products, is a good pioneer to gain social benefit.

Reduce consumption and improve efficiency by technology innovation. Use new technology which is low consumption, high efficiency, non-pollution or less-pollution to replace the old technology and equipments which are high consumption, low efficiency and terrible-pollution, for example, the new technology like continuous hydrolyzation under low temperature, continuous ion exchange, membrane concentration, and new equipments like sheet heat-exchange evaporator, non-cloth vacuum suction filter, Siemens vacuum pump and continuous crystallizer, all these help to realize cleaner and more efficient production.
The organic substances in the waste water are the most factors to cause environmental pollution, and normally they can be well eliminated by biological methods. Futaste discovers a new method using active carbon to deal with Xylose production waste water to overcome the disadvantages of traditional biological methods like using too much land, big investment, complicated technology and deep color of the treated wastewater. Rely on the adsorption function of the active carbon, the “chemical oxygen demand” elimination rate of Xylose wastewater can reach 93.71%, the “biological oxygen demand” elimination rate can reach 92.74%, and the treated wastewater is colorless and also meets state the 2nd type pollutants the 3rd level emission standards.
Furthermore Futaste also lower the production cost in the project “Distill Xylitol from Xylose mother liquid” by developing new methods of “Simulated Mobile Bed” and “Sequential simulated mobile bed separation”, to raise the corncob yield rate from 11% to 20%.

Realize integrated utilization of resources by closed recycle. Implement the mode of “closed economic” and “recycling economic”, to fully use resources and raw materials and to realize the maximum internal recycle of the materials.
Corncob is the raw material for Xylose production, while the profit from planting corns is not high. Considering the limited resources, intense competition and farmers’ maximum profit wish, there will be more and more serious conditions to get the corncobs and other resources and then cause higher and higher production cost, and the Xylose manufacturers will be easily on the edge of elimination if keeping on the traditional technology and simple product. Futaste leads us a new mode and a new future by developing its “Closed Industry Recycle Chain”. (See chart below)

Fibrin Ethanol →        Ethanol Residue
↑                                 ↓
Corncob→Xylose,Xylitol,Xylo-oligosaccharide→Corncob residue → Granule Fuel
↓                                                         ↓                                    
Wastewater→Methane Electric Power     Edible Bacterium Breeding    

→ Biological Electric Power
↓                
Kalium Fertilizer
↓
Corncob ← Corn←Soil improvement

The principle of this industry chain is: The corncobs after acidification can be distilled to make functional polyols like Xylose, Xylitol, Xylo-oligosaccharide and etc., and the residue from the production can be used for edible bacterium breeding and also for making fuel ethanol by its fibrin, and the final residue after former procedures can be used for generating electricity instead of coal. And at last the ashes after burning for electricity generation can be good kalium fertilizer for corns to again get corncobs. The wastewater from cleaning corncobs and other technique procedures has plenty of organic substances and can be biologically treated to get methane for generating the biological electric power.

This new industry chain of Futate can realize 95% integrated utilization rate to the corncobs, and also implement nearly Zero-emission during the production, and so Futaste becomes the leader in the industry to implement clean production and energy-saving.