IDEAS Energy Contest: Bioethanol from milk waste
- Aims
- Re-using the waste product from Chile’s cheese industry to reduce pollution and increase income.
- Region
- Latin America and the Caribbean
- Status
- Planning
- Summary
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Milk waste will be used to produce bioethanol, which will feed a solar bioreactor and produce compost.
This project is one of the award-winning projects of the 2009 IDEAS Energy Innovation Contest for improving energy efficiency and expanding access to renewable energy. The contest is sponsored by GVEP International, GTZ, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Korean Government. The main sponsors for this project are GVEP International and GTZ.
- Requirements
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IDEAS Energy Contest: Bioethanol from milk waste need 1:Energy Efficiency
We are seeking the following resources:
- Full Description
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The Chilean cheese industry produces around 1.3 million metric tonnes of milk whey each year. This waste product is currently unused and contributes to pollution of the local environment.
This project’s aims are twofold: to cut this pollution and help small-to-medium diary operations make extra income from the re-use of their waste.
The scheme’s creators, at Academic Metropolitan Technological University hope that once a pilot has been successfully set up, the process can be industrialised and expanded. The milk waste will be used to produce bioethanol and to feed a solar bioreactor, which can produce compost or food supplements.
About the winner: The Winning team is composed of Merchan Juan Eugenio Velez, Doctor of Chemistry and Chemical engineering from the University of Chile and Cuenca in collaboration with Juan Pedro Voss Hoffmann, Marcelo Victor Ascencio Oporto, Ronald Mauricio Sanhueza Quevedo, and Jacob Rodrigo Donoso Gonzalez. Together they form part of the team from research and development of technologies for energy efficiency at the Academic Metropolitan Technological University of the State of Chile.
