3tentos - Vera

3Tentos is a company rooted in agribusiness, offering a vertical and integrated ecosystem for agricultural input retail, grain origination and trading, and industrialization.

Founded in 1995, the company has expanded rapidly and currently operates more than 50 units across Rio Grande do Sul and Mato Grosso.

Headquartered in Santa Bárbara do Sul, 3Tentos serves nearly 17,000 active clients and has more than 160 professionals providing specialized consulting in farm management, crop practices, and technology.

The company also transforms soybean oil into biodiesel and cogenerates renewable electricity from biomass, adding value to the production chain.

Currently, 3Tentos is building an industrial unit in Vera, Mato Grosso, with the purpose of expanding its corn origination, soybean processing, and biofuel production operations.

To meet the steam demand of this new facility, the company invested in an HPB/B&W boiler with a capacity of producing 70,000 kg/h of superheated steam at 490 °C under a pressure of 67 kgf/cm²(g).

The equipment was designed to burn up to 16 different fuel mixes, including wood chips and bark, forest residues, bamboo, rice husks, corn residues, cotton residues, among other opportunity fuels.

The technology that enables this versatility is the Bubbling Fluidized Bed (BFB), currently the state-of-the-art for biomass-to-energy conversion. Boilers with this combustion system can be designed to operate with multiple fuel combinations, some with moisture content of up to 65%, while achieving combustion efficiency above 99.5%.

In addition, they offer more stable and reliable operation, resulting in higher equipment availability. To take advantage of the various opportunity fuels available in the vicinity of the plant, 3Tentos chose this solution to reduce the plant’s operating costs.

On the environmental side, the emission control system selected is the Electrostatic Precipitator, the most efficient solution for capturing particulate matter present in combustion gases.

Aiming to adapt to a future with stricter environmental regulations, 3Tentos opted for the lowest environmental impact technology offered by HPB, powered by The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W).

The boiler for the Vera unit was supplied under a modular concept, in which components such as the furnace, the tubular bundle, and the heat recovery systems are delivered to the field after being preassembled at the factory.

This approach allows for faster installation, reducing overall delivery time, while also ensuring higher quality control and equipment reliability, as the modules undergo testing and inspection at the factory prior to shipment.