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Economics of Fiber Separation from Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS) Using Sieving and Elutriation

¹Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL. ²Corresponding author, Phone: 217-333-9510. Fax: 217-244-0323. E-mail: vsingh@ uiuc.edu ³Department of Animal Science, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. ⁴Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit, Eastern Regional Research Center, ARS, USDA, Wyndmoor, PA.

Separation of fiber from distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) provides two valuable coproducts: 1) enhanced DDGS with reduced fiber, increased fat and increased protein contents and 2) fiber. Recently, the elusieve process, a combination of sieving and elutriation was found to be effective in separating fiber from two commercial samples of DDGS (DDGS-1 and DDGS-2). Separation of fiber decreased the quantity of DDGS, but increased the value of DDGS by increasing protein content and produced a new coproduct with higher fiber content. Economic analysis was conducted to determine the payback period, net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR) of the elusieve process. The dependence of animal foodstuff prices on their protein content was determined. Equipment prices were obtained from industrial manufacturers. Relative to crude protein content of original DDGS, crude protein content of enhanced DDGS was higher by 8.0% for DDGS-1 and by 6.3% for DDGS-2. For a dry-grind plant processing corn at the rate of 2,030 metric tonnes/day (80,000 bushels/day), increase in revenue due to the elusieve process would be $0.4 to 0.7M/year. Total capital investment for the elusieve process would be $1.4M and operating cost would be $0.1M/year. Payback period was estimated to be 2.5–4.6 years, NPV was $1.2–3.4M, and IRR was 20.5–39.5%.