Elo—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 9,1982
Apples, they’re not just for eating anymore
GINGER BECRIST MYERS
Staff Correspondent
ORRTANA At the Knouse
Foods, Inc. plant in Orrtana, ap
ples aren’t just for eating.
They are involved in producing
electricity, steam, ash, drying
heat, and essence flavoring. What
produces all these energy
resources? The waste product of
apple processing known as “apple
pomace”.
Knouse Foods operates the only
co-generator on Metropolitan
Edison’s energy network and the
only system of its type in the
country. The system recycles
dried apple pomace as a fuel,
yielding the 32-year-old fruit
grower’s cooperative a sizable
savings on their energy bills and,
at the same time, eliminating the
problem of what to do with all the
apple pomace.
The master-mind behind
Knouse’s innovative apple pomace
recycling program is James Oyler,
director of operations, and a 3ft
year veteran of the fruit
processing industry. Oyler is quick
to recognize, however, that without
the support of Knouse’s board of
directors, Chairman William
LaCour, and the Department of
Environmental Resources (DER),
this project could not have been
operational.
With Knouse Foods processing
enough fruit from growers to gross
85 million dollars annually, cost of
production and residual waste can
be two very costly problems.
Knouse Foods processes apples,
peaches, cherries, and
blueberries, with apples con
stituting the bulk of the processing.
The disposal of apple pomace is
a problem that has been with the
industry for years. Early on it was
dried and used for pectin in jelly
production. But, as the demands
for jelly declined, another alter
native had to be found.
Knouse Foods tried burying the
pomace in landfills, but since it is
not bio-degradable, it fermented
underground. This fermented
mass could last as long as 15 to 20
years with the possibility of
polluting underground water
sources. That’s when DER entered
the picture and demanded another
method of disposal to be employed.
Knouse Foods’ next con
sideration was to use the pomace
as an animal feed. There was some
concern about residual sprays on
the product, but with the advent of
newer sprays the concern passed.
Knouse Foods worked with Penn
State on a pilot program of feeding
the pomace to steers.
Apple pomace contains about 65
percent moisture and 35 percent
dry matter. It is high in car
bohydrates and higher in TDN
than some ensilaged feeds. The
researchers found farmers willing
to feed the pomace in poor corn
crop years, but they showed little
interest in using it when corn
silage was plentiful.
Since they couldn’t bury or feed
, progrc
pane! contains numerous safety checks which protrects both
Knouse's and Met-Ed’s electrical systems.
it, Knouse Foods decided to try
spreading it on the land. This,
however, had its problems too.
There were seasonal restrictions
that prohibited daily spreading.
And although it seemed beneficial
for the land up to a certain point,
they found that spreading too
much had a detrimental effect; the
level of soil acidity became too
high. So about 8 years ago, Oyler
concluded that the only thing they
could do was to return to drying the
pomace.
Along with the concerns of
product wastes, the cost of energy
for product processing also
became a greater concern to the
fruit processing plant as the
country became more energy
conscious.
Since Knouse Foods bad periods
of high energy demands for
electricity, Met-Ed charged them
“demand charges” as a penalty
for overuse. To cut down on these
charges and to prevent “brown
outs”, they decided to install their
own electrical generators. This
was an attempt to “peak shave”
their demand load from Met-Ed,
with a bonus of being able to resell
any excess electricity produced
back to the power company.
Gas turbines were selected as
the most efficient means of run
ning the electrical generator. But
what about the wasted heat from
the turbines? This is where Qyler,
Robert Binkley, George Hickes,
and Ken Eshelman, all of Knouse
Foods, combined their expertise to
develop a heat reclaiming system
from the turbines and combine it
into a drying process for the apple
pomace.
Knouse Foods purchased the
initial turbine, generator, and
waste heat boiler for the project.
Through the efforts of the Adams
County Commissioners, Knouse
received an additional $300,000
grant from the DER to complete
the project.
The project, housed at the
Orrtana plant in a specially
designed building, works on the
premise of using every BTU of
heat efficiently. Heat from the gas
turbine used to run the generators
is introduced into a steam boiler.
This steam is used in the fruit
processing phase to cook ap
plesauce, pasteurize fruit-juice,
etc.
The heat from the steam boiler is
blown into a dryer into which apple
pomace is introduced from a 90,000
pound hopper above the dryer.
This dries the apple pomace and
rice hulls confined in the pomace.
Rice hulls are put into the apple
squeezing process since they
provide channels through which
the juices can flow more freely
from the mass.
At this point, the rice hulls are
removed and blown into a large
silo for reuse. The remaining
pomace is pulverized to the texture
of a coarse brown flour. It is this
pulverized powder that, when
(Turn to Page El 2)
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Lucky Leaf is the name-brand for fruit
products, marketed Knouse Foods. The Adams
County processor grosses $B5 million annually
for the juices and pie filling that it makes in its
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The turbine jets and electrical generator
that Knouse Foods purchased to generate
their own power are cared for with TIC. The
The dryer drum for the apple pomace is fed
from the hopper bin above the drum which
‘4
k'
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Pa. and N.t. plants. Here Ken Esheiman
checks out the new computer which monitors
the ‘apple pomace' project. The computer will
help eliminate errors in data collection.
walls of the room housing these engines are
coated with a special sound absorption
material.
ioWs 90,
pounds of pomace.
Av