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Introduction of E10 in Austria commercially and ecologically practical

During the course of the discussions this autumn on the introduction of E10, AGRANA is again highlighting the commercial and ecological advantages of a 10 % admixture of bioethanol.

Date: 13.07.2012

During the course of the discussions this autumn on the introduction of E10, AGRANA is again highlighting the commercial and ecological advantages of a 10 % admixture of bioethanol. E10 in Austria would not require the use of additional farming land. In fact, E10 would lead to enormous potential CO2 savings being tapped and also generate valuable protein-rich animal feed as a by-product of ethanol production.

Austrian production of bioethanol sufficient to cover E10 requirements
Every year, a total of around 210,000 m³ of bioethanol are produced at AGRANA’s facility in Pischelsdorf | Lower Austria – a quantity sufficient to cover all of Austria’s domestic requirements were E10 to be introduced. AGRANA currently exports around half of the bioethanol produced in Lower Austria, thereby giving away the potential CO2 savings Austria could fully make use of itself, rather than having to purchase expensive emission rights on the global market. The introduction of E10 in Austria would not require additional production capacity or land for cultivating crops – exports of bioethanol would simply be lower.

Optimal resource utilisation at the Pischelsdorf facility
Besides bioethanol, the cereals used in Pischelsdorf also form the basis of the guaranteed GMO-free, protein-rich animal feed ActiProt®. Through its investment of € 65m in a plant for the production of wheat starch and wheat gluten, located upstream of the bioethanol facility, AGRANA is now going a step further. This new plant, which is due to be commissioned at the end of 2013, extracts all of the important components of the raw materials for food and animal feed production, before the remaining agricultural ingredients are used in the production of bioethanol. Along with the high-purity CO2, which is produced by the industrial gas supplier Air Liquide via a CO2 recovery plant, a total of four high quality products will soon be obtained from only one commodity at the Pischelsdorf site.

Greenhouse gas savings due to bioethanol from Pischelsdorf
This 100% utilisation of raw materials can – as the most recent life-cycle analysis performed by Joanneum Research Forschungs GmbH highlights – lead to a rise in the potential greenhouse gas savings achievable with bioethanol, as opposed to petrol, from 50 % at present to 70 % in the future.

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