CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The bioethanol industry has valuable by-products: for each liter of ethanol, 2 kg of wet distillers grains with solubles (WDGS) and 0.75 kg of CO2 are produced. WDGS is a product rich in proteins, which makes it valuable as feed for beef, milk, poultry and hog production, although its high moisture content (35% dry matter) reduces its storability. WDGS is stored at environmental conditions in piles on the bare ground or on concrete floor from 7 to 14 days (depending on ambient temperature) before intake. This short storage time requires an almost continuous supply of WDGS from the ethanol plants to the animal production farms. In Argentina the silo bag technology is widely used for storage of grains and it could also be adapted for storing WDGS. If WDGS storage time can be substantially extended with hermetic storage, logistic distribution could be improved and cost reduced, expanding the use of this product. The objective of this study is to evaluate hermetic storage for extending storage time of WDGS. Two storage systems (hermetic and non-hermetic) and two storage times (10 and 20 days) were proposed and three replicates were considered for each combination of treatments. WDGS samples were collected at the beginning of the experiment, 10 and 20 days of storage, and the following tests were performed: moisture content, appearance and odor, colony forming units (moulds and yeasts), pH, crude protein, ammonia nitrogen, ruminal degradability and intestinal digestibility of protein. It was concluded that WDGS could be hermetically stored without quality losses for at least 20 days, while in non-hermetic conditions spoilage evidences become noticeable after 10 day of storage.

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