Industrial symbiosis to improve zero waste production system: middle Italy wine district case study

This article studies the energetic potential of biogas obtainable from winery waste production through an anaerobic digestion (AD) process, within the territorial context of Emilia Romagna in Italy. The winery district produces about 5.2 million tons of grapes. These wastes are processes by anaerobic digestion in 5 biodigesters, this methodology allows to re- introduce in the production process 800,000 tons of food waste, consisting of: vegetable waste, wood chips and waste from pruning. Reusing production waste generates 12,236 million Nm3 per year of biogas and 104,283 million kW/h per year of electrical energy. These results show that partnership between companies and the implementation of process innovations, could be reached by food manufacturers which requires a high energy needs and that produce significant amounts of organic waste, reusable by-products as raw material for biogas production.