CPC International Corn Wet Milling Complex

This plant is one of the world's largest refineries of liquid corn sweeteners (glucose, dextrose and fructose). The facility has a rated capacity of 180,000 bushels per day. Fluor conducted extensive studies prior to revamping this 70-year-old corn wet milling complex, located on the west side of Chicago. A major energy audit was conducted as part of this study and scoping effort. Fluor performed the design, engineering, procurement and construction for the $300 million rebuild to be carried out in two phases.

Client's Challenge

Based on the advanced age of the existing CPC facility, special considerations were utilized in the design and construction to maximize product quality, to control bacteriological problems, and in other clean design considerations such as clean in place.

Special considerations were also given to material handling, storage, safety, dust control and sanitary requirements.

Fluor's Solution

Phase 1 included relocating the existing operations (material storage, starch bagging, boxing and warehousing), as well as the design and construction of new corn sweetener refinery plant and major modification of dextrose crystallization and packaging facilities.

Conclusion

In addition to the increased capacity and enhanced material handling systems, the Argo plant is now highly automated by use of both distributed control and programmable logic controllers to efficiently manage operations.