Innovative Projects

PPE has extensive expertise in developing custom designed creative and innovative projects. The Smithfield Farms Project detailed below is a good example of a successully completed highly innovative project.

Smithfield Farms, Utah
Converting Animal Waste into Purified Methanol

Smithfield Farms is the largest pork processor in the world. Utah farm houses 750,000 hogs. Together these animals produce hundreds of tons of waste-every day. What should they do with it? Smithfield Farms posed that question to the industry, and selected PPE's proposal as the most likely to achieve success.

In response, PPE designed and manufactured a unique system that benefits Smithfield Farms, local residents, and the environment. The system captures and cleans the gasses generated from the detritus. After passing through a PPE-constructed separation system, a steam methane reformer, a reactor with a catalyst, and a distiller, the waste product becomes purified methanol. This process is achieved with nearly zero emissions.

Smithfield Farms now has an environmentally safer method for dealing with the copious amounts of hog waste necessarily generated by its operations. It also has a free renewable fuel-methanol-that burns cleaner than gasoline. Smithfield Farms in turn used this methanol to power another PPE-constructed facility-its biodiesel plant in Claiborne, Texas.

You can contact us to discuss how PPE can handle your process problems.