Problems of environmental safety at processing agricultural raw materials
Acad. L.A. Oganesyants - Director of "All-Russian" Research Institute of Brewery,
Non-alcoholic and Wine-making Industries of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences
A brisk growth is lately observed in output volumes of key foods in the Russian Federation. It became possible due to stabilization of the overall economic situation in the country, state support to agriculture, increase in paying capacity of the population, building of conditions for attracting domestic and foreign investments aimed at the development of the food and processing industry.
So, the agricultural output volume more than doubled in 2006 against the level of 2000, and the volume of production and deliveries of food goods to the market increased 3.3 times and reached RUR 1717 Bl in current prices, that amounts to 16.7% of the production volume shipped by all processing facilities of the country.
For this time production of meat and by-products of 1st category had risen by 76%, outputs of sausage goods and beet sugar doubled, vegetative oil by 87%, margarine production by 86%, whole-milk production by 61%, canned fruits and vegetables by 5 times, non-alcoholic drinks and mineral waters almost tripled. Production of other key commodities of the food and processing industry considerably increased, too.
The currently taken measures in the Russian Federation for providing priority development of agriculture will allow further accelerated growth in food production.
At the same time, the strategic tasks of the agricultural development includes production of human-safe foods, development and wide introduction of nonwaste technologies of processing of agricultural raw materials ensuring maximal yield of beneficial production, increase in production efficiency and reduction of the technological load on the environment.
The legislative base is created in Russia for setting up the grounds of the state policy in the area of environmental protection and ensuring of environmental safety.
So, the Federal Law of June 24, 1998 #89-FZ "On Production and Consumption Wastes" established the legal grounds for handling wastes of production and consumption with the purposes of avoidance of their harmful influence on human health and the environment and of their involvement in the economic circulation as additional sources of raw material.
The Federal Law of January 10, 2002 #7-FZ "On Environmental Protection" governs the area of interaction between the society and the nature arising at conducting economic and other activities entailing an influence on the nature as the most important component of the environment.
At present, a public discussion of the draft technical rules "On Environmental Safety" is held, the development of the initiative rules "On Ecological Agriculture, Ecological Nature Management and Respective Marking of Products" is coming to its end.
The food and processing industry of Russia includes 30 sub-industries comprising 25,000 plants and separate shops, which generate actually all foods necessary for the population, including children's products.
The plants process a huge amount of products of agriculture, river and sea fisheries and generate at that up to 45 Ml tons of wastes (secondary raw resources) a year, including up to 25 Ml tons from beet processing in the sugar industry and over 17 Ml ton in the grain processing branches (mills, distilleries, breweries and starch-and-syrup facilities).
The research establishments of the Storage and Processing Department of the Russian Agricultural Academy have carried out a significant work for developing resource-saving technologies in the majority of branches, which ensure comprehensive processing of raw materials, reduction of the consumption of raw material and heat-and-power resources, increase in quality and competitiveness of production, reduction of the man-caused impact on the environment. However because of the absence of necessary means they are poorly utilized.
At plants of many processing branches, a critical situation has developed with regard to utilization of secondary raw material resources. The volume of their processing presently total about 50% in the industry, and the remaining part is dumped, causing an appreciable harm to the environment.
Facilities of the food and processing industry adversely influence water resources to the greatest degree. Alongside with this, the soil and atmosphere are also harmed (solid, liquid and gaseous substances are emitted).
The plants processing agricultural production have mainly cleaning facilities (settling tanks), but in some cases even such facilities are absent.
Within the framework of the present report it is impossible to consider environmental safety problems at processing agricultural raw materials in all 30 sub-industries of the food and processing industry. Therefore we shall dwell on the situation in some of them, where small amounts of the main production's wastes are generated while processing agricultural raw materials.
In the sugar industry, up to 26 Ml tons of sugar beet is annually processed with generating about 23 Ml tons of crude pulp and 1.5 Ml tons of molasses.
Molasses is used as a basic raw material in the yeast industry and applied in the baking industry and as additives for animal feeds. With regard to beet pulp, it is used not fully as the cattle number has reduced. Recently, implementation of a large national project for the development of agriculture started in the country, which, in particular, stipulates accelerated development of the animal sector with a substantial growth in cattle inventories. It will allow to completely utilizing the formed amount of pulp both in raw and dried kinds as a basic feed resource.
In the near future, it is planned to introduce autonomous water supply systems in the sugar industry for reduction of both fresh water consumption and discharge of polluted sewage, to install dust-collecting and cleaning equipment at refineries, to considerably increase industrial drying of pulp, to introduce vertical settling tanks, thickeners and special centrifuges for deaquation of vehicle-washing sediments, to apply biological treatment of sewage waters ensuring an increase in the clearing degree up to 90%, and a lot of other measures.
At plants of the fat-and-oil industry, secondary raw material resources - press cake and meals - are generated at processing oil-bearing raw materials and extracting vegetable oils.
2.6 Ml tones of press cake and meals were obtained in 2006. This entire amount is completely used for making compound feeds.
With the purposes of increasing the level of ecologization in the branch it is planned to introduce the following:
- alkali-free refining of oils and fats for increase of the main product's yield;
- oil refining in a constant magnetic field without application of percolation clays that allows reducing the amount of secondary raw material resources;
- Oil hydrogenation by the saturation method with the purpose of improving the ecological state of the water and air basins;
- treatment of oil-bearing sewage with application of ultrafiltration ensuring a higher degree of its cleaning and extraction of additional fat amounts for soap making;
- treatment of spent-soap lye, building of zero-discharge soap production in order to raise the water cleaning degree and to return sodium chloride and other products back to the production process.
In the distilling industry, about 200 factories operate, which process 2.5 Ml tons of grain. This is accompanied by annual formation of more than 10 Ml tons of grain dreg, of which just 25% is utilized and the remaining amount is taken out to filtration fields or dumped in reservoirs, thereby polluting the environment.
When solving the question of dreg utilization, the primary point is reducing its yield through returning dreg filtrate to the batching stage, introduction of new methods of hydrodynamical and fermentative catalysis of grain polymers, obtaining and attenuation of concentrated wort, developing of new alcohol yeast strains with osmophilic properties and resistant to increased concentrations of spirits, as well as application of new multi-enzymatic systems for deeper processing of grain raw materials.
At this stage the dreg amount can be reduced by 40-60% with minimum costs for capital investments.
Proceeding from the possibilities of domestic plants with taking into account both domestic and foreign experiences, the Russian scientists together with machine builders have developed a new technology and a set of equipment for dreg processing. They are based on the use of an original pneumatic spiral dryer. The drying process runs at low temperature, therefore all beneficial components of dreg (vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates) are preserved. The latest realized variant of this technology includes complete automation of the process with computer control by one operator. The developed set of equipment is quite universal and can be applied for treatment of beer distiller's grain, squash and other secondary raw materials.
Such a feed product as dry dreg was tested in animal facilities and positive results were obtained at fattening cattle and poultry.
The above-mentioned technology is introduced at several distilleries. Its wide application in the industry will raise profitability of distilling by 10-15% and allow obtaining about 1 Ml tons of high-quality feed products with saving up to 1 Ml tons of feed grain and considerable alleviation of environmental problems in the branch.
Also, a developed technology of cultivating feed yeast on the basis of microbial transformation of dreg filtrate is being introduced at distilleries. It allows obtaining a product with a higher protein content and increased nutritive value.
According to the Federal Law #171-FZ "On State Regulation of Production and Turnover of Ethanol, Alcoholic and Alcohol-containing Goods", from January 1, 2008, production of ethanol, whose distilling technology includes obtaining of dreg, is permitted only under condition of its complete processing and (or) utilization at cleaning facilities.
This act will put an end to dreg disposal to reservoirs, ravines and other places and considerably improve environmental conditions on areas adjacent to distilleries.
Large volumes of secondary resources are formed in the brewing industry. So, 2.4 Ml tons of beer distiller's grain and 360,000 tons of grain wastes, beer yeast and other secondary raw material resources were generated in 2006 at producing almost 1 Bl dl of beer.
The grain wastes, malt sprouts and fusion are fully used as feed additives in the animal sector. However, the branch faces grave difficulties with utilizing the great amount of beer distiller's grain.
In spite of the fact that beer distiller's grain is a valuable feed product and its assimilability equals 82%, its use in the animal branch is problematic, particularly in the summer season, as it is a perishable waste of brewing and requires special storage conditions and very prompt sale.
Therefore, the technology of thermal utilization of beer distiller's grain for obtaining a biologically clean source of energy is very topical for the industry. This technology allows obtaining up to 1 ?Wt of thermal energy from 1 ton of distiller's grain with humidity of about 80%.
Such utilization of beer distiller's grain considerably improves industrial performance of the plant, reduces consumption of external energy carriers by up to 90%, provides reliable utilization of distiller's grain, reduces carbonic gas emissions to the atmosphere.
Our scientists have developed a technology of utilizing beer distiller's grain with the purpose of obtaining a feed additive for cure and prevention purposes. The method consists in enrichment of distiller's grain with a mixture of combined compounds with heterogeneous ligands simulating active centers of enzymes and subsequent fermentation with the use of an industrial yeast strain.
The calculated economic benefit of introducing this technology for obtaining 100,000 tons of feed product is RUR 63-138 Ml a year, depending on the compounds applied.
Also, a technology and hardware were designed for obtaining biogas from anaerobic fermentation of sewage of fermentation facilities. Compared with currently existing practical processes of anaerobic treatment of sewage, effectiveness of the above-mentioned technology is higher by more than 30-50% owing to intensified fermentation process and hardware design features.
Significant amounts of agricultural production are processed by plants of the starch-and-syrup industry. Maize and potatoes have been the key starch-containing raw materials in Russia for many years. The effectiveness of processing maize grain is to a substantial degree provided through development and sale of valuable by-products. The technology of the All-Russian Research Institute of Starch Products provides complete and effective utilization of all components of maize grain - extract, gluten, maize feed, germ - with minimum water consumption.
In 2006, 230,000 tons of secondary raw resources were generated at processing agricultural raw materials by the industry's plants, and almost 200,000 tons of feeds for animal and poultry raising facilities produced almost were produced from that waste volume.
It is necessary to notice that the starch-and syrup industry holds a top position among all the food sector's sub-industries in terms of depth of secondary raw material processing and effectiveness of water consumption in the production cycle.
Along with feeds, secondary raw material resources annually generated by the branch's plants include more than 40,000 tons of maize germs, which are used for making high-quality maize oil, and more than 13,000 tons of dry maize gluten. Within the next 2 years almost all amount of this protein product (about 40,000 tons a year) will be generated in dry kind.
The research institutions of the Russian Agricultural Academies have developed high performance technologies ensuring comprehensive processing of agricultural raw materials and smaller formation of secondary raw material resources as a result of their biotransformation for food and feed purposes. The results of studies conducted over the recent years allowed to develop a series of present-day technologies for processing secondary resources allowing production of 262 valuable foods and drinks, including those having medical and preventive properties.
The developed technologies allow creating high-tech closed-cycle facilities for processing agricultural raw materials with a higher yield of the main product, saving of power supplies, capital costs, producing of food and feed additives with various functional properties.
The industrial introduction of the above-mentioned productions will promote the realization of the priority national project for the agricultural development because it will allow raising the degree of agricultural raw material processing, profitability of production, contributing to stronger feed supply for the cattle and poultry raising industries as well as to a smaller man-made load on the environment.
