Each year Cory Stiehl, lecturer in chemical and biological engineering chooses a new client for her students to work with for their senior capstone project. This year, she challenged her students to evaluate a small micro distillery based in Norwalk, Iowa. Their findings included insights on how the distillery could improve its business practices.
Broadbent Distillery, run by the father-son duo John Sr. and John Jr., is considered the smallest “legal” micro distillery in Iowa. Their business, established in 2011, needed recommendations to help lower costs and increase production quantity and quality of their new products. Eager to lend some expertise, the Ch E 430 class took a field trip to Broadbent in November to analyze the plant and begin its research.
The class was divided into 10 groups with each conducting an economic analysis and safety evaluation. The teams then developed ideas for recommendations based on the most notable inefficiencies at the distillery.
Once they were back on campus, the groups encountered their first big, unanticipated challenge: finding a starting point. “The fact that the project requirements were very open-ended was the biggest challenge because we didn’t know where to start. We ended up collaborating with other groups so we could all find a good starting point,” explains Tom Hindley, senior in chemical engineering. “At the same time, the open-ended aspect was what made the project so interesting because we were free to give any recommendation we thought was applicable.”
Hindley, who was matched up with Nathan Hartman, John King, and Amanda Machacek, says their first step was researching different aspects of Broadbent’s business. “The first two weeks we just threw around ideas based on our individual research and gathered as much information as possible. After that, we had so much information we could select for in-depth research for our recommendations that we really had to narrow down our scope.”
One of the first breakthroughs in the group’s research was a result of the economic analysis. While determining how much Broadbent needed to sell to be cost efficient, the group discovered the plant was losing about $20,000 a year. Of course, after considering the small amount of time the plant has been in business—less than nine months at the time the students gathered their research—and taking into consideration start-up costs, the number wasn’t all that overwhelming. Still, the group determined cutting costs would be a big portion of its proposal.
The team also created a less labor-intensive filtration and separation process to prepare the mash, or starchy liquid used to create alcohol.The distillery’s current methods had automation to allow the system to run on its own. The filter system required someone to manually put in the mash,and the cooker did not have the appropriate propeller attached, so someone would have to watch the cooker and stir on regular intervals. Since batches cook in about six hours, the process was very time consuming and required a lot of prep work and cleaning.
The students’ process filters out the liquid portion of mash more efficiently, using a rotary drum vacuum filter.
“To simply put it, it’s a machine that separates solids from a slurry mixture by using a drum with a screen on it and with a pump for a vacuum inside,” explains Hindley. “The drum is spun around a tray of the slurry, the liquid is sucked through the screen while the solids stay stuck on the outside, and then the solids are scraped off as the drum continues to rotate.”
After noticing Broadbent’s machinery cooling system for the distillery’s equipment was outside, and considering how harsh Iowa winters can be, the team also recommended the company find a place inside to keep the cooling system to avoid unwanted freezing.
With these three major ideas fully supported and prepared, the team presented its proposal to Stiehl, the class teaching assistant, and the Broadbents. The group noted balancing the knowledge basis of the owners and evaluators made preparing the presentation unique. The students had to avoid engineering jargon on account of the Broadbents, while at the same time, they had to include more technical aspects to demonstrate to Stiehl what they had learned in class.
In the end, the team found the project to be a valuable learning experience. “I thought it was a great real-world experience because in the future, half the people we will be presenting to are going to be managers or people who aren’t going to have the technical knowledge we do,” says Hindley.
“Presenting technical details to the owners in a way they understood made me feel more comfortable about my skills as an engineer,” says Hartman. An added bonus was learning how to best utilize equipment. “A lot of chemical plants we may work for after graduation may have a lot of old equipment that needs to be combined with new equipment for efficiency reasons. Now we have the knowledge and experience to figure out how to do that,” he adds.
Following the presentation, the students were not informed as to what recommendations the owners would take and utilize in their business, but they were pleased by the interest the Broadbents showed in their research. “The owners asked us several follow-up questions regarding our filtering process,” says Hartman. “I think a more efficient solution they could build themselves at a low cost was appealing.”
In January, the Distillery issued an update based on the improvements they’ve made to the plant, which included placing a larger sign on their building, improving their ozone process to sanitize and purify distillery equipment, cataloging Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), and installing safety tags in the plant. Broadbent acknowledges that while the students offered many great solutions, the company couldn’t possibly implement them all. Instead, John Sr. and Jr. devised a list of intended process improvements to complete as their budget allows based on their business priorities.