• One of the most difficult procedures in the wine making industry around the world is cleaning and removing the remaining marc from the traditional fermentation vats. Through a project funded by Corfo’s Innova Chile, Dr. Lucio Cañete, together with professors Andrés Pérez de Arce and Héctor Barrera, of the Technological Faculty, are working on the design of devices to make this task easier, providing a solution both safe for workers and economical for the industry.

 
Andrés Pérez de Arce and Héctor Barrera, together with Dr. Lucio Cañete, the three of them professors at the Technological Faculty, are analyzing the technological viability of a device to solve one of the most complex problems for the wine industry: the cleaning of the traditional vats where the must is fermented.

Up to now, the fermentation process occurs in huge steel tanks that are filled up with crushed grape juice that stays there for a week or two, until the must is removed.

As the marc - the solid residue of seeds, skins, stalks and other impurities- remains in the tank, getting it clean before using it again is a problem for the industry, because it means that a worker has to go inside the vat through a lateral hatch, what puts his health at risk because of the toxic gas build-up in this dark and damp environment.

This is one of the most required works by the wine industry but with the least supply of workers due to the hostile work conditions; that is why companies usually offer additional bonuses to attract workers, but this is still not enough.

World problem

For this reason, Professors Lucio Cañete and Héctor Herrera, of the Department of Industrial Technologies, together with Professor Andrés Pérez de Arce, of the Department of Agrarian Management of the Technological Faculty, were awarded funds through Corfo’s InnovaChile for the project Extractor de Residuos Cohesivos Desde Medianas y Grandes Cubas Viníferas, code 13IDL1-25426 (Cohesive Residues Extractor for Medium and Large-sized Wine Making Tanks), in order to develop a device to solve this problem.

“The problem affects wine making not only at a domestic level, but worldwide,” Professor Cañete explained. Although some wine producers have vats than can be turned upside down to facilitate the removal of the marc, they are very expensive, so most companies use the traditional steel or concrete tanks.

After studying different possibilities, Professors Cañete, Barrera and Pérez de Arce decided to design a device to vacuum the marc without destroying it (as it is sometimes pressed again) and without needing a worker to enter the vat.

In a few days, the researchers should deliver the first progress report. They received the funding last April and it considers the creation of a test prototype; however, the researchers have already tested their proposal in wine producing companies.

A few weeks ago, they presented the idea in the conference of the Asociación Nacional de Ingenieros Agrónomos Enólogos de Chile (National Association of Oenologist- Agronomical Engineers of Chile), held in Molina. “We had a good response, because it is a real problem for the wine industry. Our solution seeks to reduce the workers’ health risk and to optimize the available time of the vats to make the most of the harvest time,” Professor Pérez de Arce said.

Today, the project is at an initial stage of development, testing the hypothesis to model the equipment and further creation of the prototype. The most advanced methods in this process are leading to ripper-vacuum cleaner-like and Archimedes’ screw-like solutions. In both cases, the device will be introduced in the tank through the hatch, but the worker would have the possibility of controlling it from the outside.


Translated by Marcela Contreras