José Porta: Example from Argentina (a developed case study)
After a small coffee break José Porta from the Argentinian Microdestilerias Porta shared his experience of the realisation of a bioethanol distillery in Argentina.
In Porta’s conventional distilleries the feedstock used is corn because of a proven efficiency rate of 90%. In such plants the transport costs for the corn and then for the removal of the digestate sum up to 75% of the possible production and 50% of the heat is used to produce so called “burlanda” (e.g. dried corn digestate). This makes the whole process not sustainable.
When trying to find an alternative the challenge was to overcome the concept of economies of scale, to create a technology which can work in the countryside and to make the energy use more efficient. This could be achieved.
The so called MiniDest uses corn as feedstock (pretreated with enzymes) which grows directly around the plants. It works automatically (remote operation for several plants from one headquarter) and is energetically sustainable (short transport distances). The digestate doesn’t need to be prepared (dried) for reducing transport costs and is instead used as nutrition for the cattle of the company’s farm next to the MiniDest and thus integrating the distillery into the agro-company.
One truck loaded with ethanol that leaves the micro plant for instance is substituting three trucks loaded with corn and three loaded with digestate.
Under these conditions the production costs for a litre of ethanol are lower than of the conventional plants. By using the vinasse (slops) directly on site for the cattle the plant can save up to 50% of the caloric waste and can route this energy to another use.
Mr Porta envisioned that with micro distilleries like these it would be possible to let the whole Argentinian car fleet run on ethanol.
The presentation was enriched by two short videos in which on the one hand the plant concept was shown in an animated video and on the other hand the construction of the plant in its surroundings was shown.