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Viking Heat Engines and SuperBrix partner to generate heat and power from Colombian rice husk

Viking Heat Engines has announced that it has teamed up with SuperBrix to transform waste from local rice production into affordable, clean electricity and heat.

(Left) Ricardo Ghisays CEO, SuperBrix, and Chris Straughn Technical Manager at VHEC (photo courtesy VHEC).
(Left) Ricardo Ghisays CEO, SuperBrix, and Chris Straughn Technical Manager at VHEC (photo courtesy VHEC). (Left) Ricardo Ghisays CEO, SuperBrix, and Chris Straughn Technical Manager at VHEC (photo courtesy VHEC).

Norway-based Viking Heat Engines A/S, a subsidiary of Viking Development Group has teamed up with SuperBrix, a leading manufacturer of milling and grain-processing solutions in Barranquilla, Colombia, to transform waste from local rice production into affordable, clean electricity and heat.

Every year, the world’s rice producers create millions of tonnes of waste in the form of husk. The rice husk is the outer layer of the grain, which is removed during the milling process. Colombia alone produces 460 000 tonnes of husk annually, which often has an adverse environmental impact since much of it is either burned or simply dumped.

By combining forces, SuperBrix and Viking Heat Engines are to enable rice farmers to burn the husk they produce in an environmentally friendly way, and create electricity and heat in the process. According to Dirk Nuber, CEO of Viking Heat Engines in the Caribbean, the electricity, and especially the heat produced by such an installation, are vital to the production of rice on farms.

– The solution that SuperBrix has provided up until now is called the TEO furnace, and this has been especially developed to dry the rice. We’ll take a portion of the heat that these ‘dryers’ produce and transform the energy into electricity using our CraftEngine technology. The CraftEngine will power the farm’s facilities and our own installation, eliminating the need to run expensive diesel generators, Nuber explained.

Perfect match

Dirk came across SuperBrix during a visit to a rice farm in Guyana. Founded in 1960, SuperBrix has gained recognition as a very innovative company.

– I found the TEO furnace at the farm, and thought it was pretty sophisticated,” he says. “It was burning rice husk and producing heat, and I thought that’s all we need, remarked Nuber.

A few days later, contact was made with SuperBrix in Colombia.

– They had been trying to find a partner that could produce power, but all the technologies they had come across were either too expensive or too large in scale. When they saw what we had to offer, they invited us to come along right away, said Nuber.

Very little R&D will be needed to combine the TEO furnace with the CraftEngine, and the partners plan to have the new solution up and running by June this year. Together they will roll out this technology in Colombia, as well as the 14 other countries that SuperBrix currently serves.

– This solution will not only benefit farmers in off-grid or rural areas, it will also support industrial rice producers. I think we have a fantastic opportunity ahead of us. If these are the things we can do with rice, just imagine what we can do with other natural resources. It is through our focus on developing partnerships like this that we at Viking Heat Engines plan to penetrate new and exciting growth markets, ended Nuber.

 

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