Regional Institute of Wine and Oil

Rimini, the ViEnergy project at Ecomondo

IRVO, in collaboration with Legacoop Sicilia and ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), are organizing the conference on 4 November 2015 at Ecomondo in Rimini “Innovation and research for green agriculture: Collaborating to cooperate”,

within which the results of the “ViEnergy project”, financed with the EU funds of the Italy-Malta OP 2007-2013, on the use of wine by-products as raw materials for green energy.

Technicians and researchers from the various institutes will illustrate an innovative project for greater sustainability of the wine production system. The environmental impacts, connected with the cultivation of the vineyard and the winemaking process, for the production of a bottle of wine will be illustrated.

An innovative system will be presented, developed and tested in Sicily, which, starting from the capture and storage of CO2 coming from the fermentation of musts, through a chemical process of CO2 conversion that uses renewable or low cost electricity, leads to the production of methane to be reused in agricultural vehicles for growing vineyards or for transport. During the meeting, a 30 kW methanator prototype will be presented.

The idea of circular development will be highlighted through the initiative, proposed for the first time in Sicily and Italy, of the production of a synthetic methane (CH4) obtained from the combination of a waste, the CO2 from fermentation of the musts, with hydrogen obtained from renewable sources.

The production of hydrogen can, in fact, take place through hydrolysis of water, using electricity from renewable sources (typically photovoltaic or small wind) directly connected to the methanation plant or using marginal, low-cost energy from the national electricity grid, in which case the hydrogen production plant, taking on the function of adjustable energy storage, would have a clear stabilizing and smart effect on the electricity grid itself.

Among the speakers, Giuseppe Gullo of Lega Coop, the director of IRVO, Lucio Monte, the oenologist Mario Ragusa and the ENEA researchers Andrea Capriccioli and Francesco Cappello. Antonello Pezzini of the European Economic and Social Committee will coordinate the interventions while the conclusions are entrusted to Biagio Bergesio, Head of Sustainable and Renewable Energy at Legacoop Agroalimentare.