Cogeneration with Energy Sustainability Project for Bacardi Distillery

Abstract

At the Bacardi Distillery facilities in Puerto Rico, power outages are a problem that have affected rum production operations and costs. It has been identified that the cause of this problem is that the facilities do not have an energy cogeneration system that can provide them with reliable and low-cost energy to operate their facilities. Additionally, senior management wants the facilities to be self-sustaining, using by products of alcohol production as a fuel source and eco-friendly to the environment to reduce the carbon footprint. To meet the needs of the plant, a process was designed to obtain information from the operations, to create an analytical model of self-sustainability and develop a project that meets these expectations. An analysis of the processes was able to identify the necessary information to produce an analytical model with low-cost alternatives that could be implemented to achieve self-sustainability. After the changes, the facilities are self-sustaining and have a cogeneration system that produces reliable, low-cost energy and has the capacity to operate for long periods of time. Key Terms ⎯ business transformation, byproducts, energy efficient, clean energy.