MASS AND ENERGY BALANCES IN THE WINE INDUSTRY

UDAQUIOLA S.; CASTRO M.; RODRIGUEZ R. ; ECHEGARAY M.; HEKTOR K.; PALACIOS C.; OLIVER P.

Río de Janeiro

Congreso; 2nd Mercosur Congress on Chemical Engineering-4th Mercosur Congress on Process Systems Engineering; 2005

Univerisdad Federal de Río de Janeiro-Instituto militar de Ing.-PLAPIQUI-Universidad Nacional de Litoral

The acute deep economical crisis in Argentina has obliged to focus the efforts to develop technological tools and innovative solutions which help to overcome costs and optimized processes. Moreover, international tools and environmental regulations must be met in order to wine export markets.In our region the main activity is wine production. This industry has historically been a handicraft activity and little engineering has been applied. Therefore, the main objective in this work is to use the principles of chemical engineering to optimize this industrial activity. Wine production is a multibatch process with different raw materials and different products and obviously with operating conditions that vary according to each case. This work aims to reduce energy and resources consumption, mainly water. To achieve this, the process steps should be modeled and optimized to yield the correspondingly operating conditions.First results are presented regarrding the flow diagrams for the different production lines and mass and energy balances for the global process and for each process step. It has been taken into account the water supply, as one of the most important resources which used should be diminished. The wastes, tails ans wate waters are also considered in order to meet environmental regulations. In doing so, it is possible to propose actions which lower energy and water consumption costs, affluents treatments costs and environmental management.