Las Chilcas: A Model that Integrates Grains, Meat and Energy in the North of Cordoba

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July 1, 2022

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(Clarín Rural (Google Translation)) The soul of the company, almost on the border with Santiago del Estero, is a biodigester that processes pig and steer waste to generate the energy needed by a mini ethanol distillery.

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The feedlot pens are 2,500 meters from the biodigester and the pig farm, which concentrates 80% of the pig slurry, is also at that distance. “The manure from the steers is loaded onto a truck and taken away, but the slurry, which is liquid, goes through pipes to the biodigester,” said Aguilar Benítez.

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The pig leg is strong: they produce 2 million kilos of meat per year (about 15,500 capons) and it was key in adding value to grains and in regional development. “In 2012, this was an agricultural company and we had the feedlot. With the first stage of the pig farm we went to 27 employees and with the growth of all the businesses and the ethanol plant, we surpassed a staff of more than 80 people”, he highlighted.

It is a path that has been full of challenges and the last one was the collapse of the profitability of ethanol.

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An alternative to stay afloat emerged with the pandemic. In March, at the beginning of the quarantine, they began to produce sanitary or hydrated alcohol , which is the input to produce gel alcohol (to cut gasoline, “anhydrous” or dehydrated alcohol is produced). They sell it to the Porta Brothers plant, which is on the outskirts of Córdoba. .

As the ethanol plant needs fuel to generate heat, the steam generated by the biodigester is achieved with biogas produced from the waste of the pig farm and the feedlot. This biogas, in addition to making them environmentally sustainable, allows them to have lower costs in the distillery and thus be more competitive compared to productions that consume liquefied gas (LPG) or natural gas. READ MORE

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