Danes are to drive on wheat

“The biorefinery is praised for producing green energy and at the same time reducing Denmark’s severely criticized soya import from South America,” writes Lars Attrup.

The biorefinery’s relatively large consumption of wheat will not lead to a shortage in neither feed nor food. The advantage of biorefining is that you separate and process the wheat grain, so that the total amount of nutrients in the grain are utilized more optimal, than when using wheat in the traditional way. 

Danish winter wheat is because of its high amount of starch not used for food, but primarily for feed.

“When the farmer feeds the pigs with regular wheat, the animals can only digest a small part of the protein found in the grain, and the fibres go directly through the animal,” explains Svend Brandstrup, CEO of hveiti. Through a biorefining of winter wheat, you also get a protein product. The processing of this product makes the protein more obtainable, and thereby allows for the pig to better digest the product. 

Eat your cake and have it too

According to Professor Claus Felby from the University of Copenhagen, tests show that you can produce bioethanol from e.g. Danish wheat without expanding the agricultural area. This is because the process in the biorefinery allows for a better utilization of the nutrients found in wheat. 

Claus Felby explains; “when we use Danish wheat for an ethanol production, we also get a feed product containing a very high amount of protein. This replaces imported goods. On the bottom line, the effect in a global perspective is an unchanged agricultural area for the production of food and feed, and on top of this we also get the production of bioethanol. If we approach this intelligently, we can have our cake and eat it too.”

Products

The biorefinery, to an estimated value of 1.7 million Danish kroner, will on a yearly basis process 530,000 tons of winter wheat and produce:

• 200 mill. litres of bioethanol with a CO2 reduction capacity of 70 %. The bioethanol can replace 10 % of the Danish gasoline consumption;
• 115,000 tons of protein which can replace part of the Danish soya import from South America and;
• 45,000 tons of fibres which can be used for e.g. bread and breakfast products.

Svend Brandstrup explains: “product costs will of course vary according to the price of wheat, but generally the price will be around four Danish kroner a litre. This means that we can sell our product to a price very close to the gasoline price, and therefore, we will not need government support.

Source: Attrup, Lars: Danskerne skal køre på hvede. Jyllands-Posten, 19.03.2012.