After approx 50.000 operating hours of my digesters, I understood well and amply demonstrated that the by-products of the oil industry are such a resource that their management in an anaerobic digestion plant is mandatory. The biggest blasphemy is that there are still people who consider these products waste.
Today, with the energy crisis caused by the war, it has finally become necessary to think seriously about an energy supply plan that includes this type of technology. Finally someone at the top has realized that the complete dependence on fossil fuels, moreover imported from third countries, is no longer a viable path. At the moment, between the cost of electricity and the fuel bought for its weight in gold, doing business has become really difficult.
For some months now the rest of our beautiful country has started talking about ecological transition and circular economy. For us nothing new. In our company (MioOlio Frantoio Oleario Cassese Domenico of Villa Castelli in the province of Brindisi, in the photos), we started down this road in 2013 with the advent of Leopard (two Leopard 5 and one Leopard 8) in the crusher and we finished it in 2016 with the installation of biodigesters. Expensive but welcome guests, who occupy the 200 sq m best used ever. Despite the tables which, considering the kw per square metre, state that anaerobic digestion plants are anti-economic compared to nuclear power, for us they have become an indispensable resource for the economy of our mill. We are most likely still today the only ones to feed our biogas plant with 100% olive paste deriving from the DMF cycle (multi-function decanter).
My bacteria – merry little families residing in the biodigesters – behave very well, constantly eating the pate deriving from the DMF cycle which feeds the biogas production cycle every day. The numbers have been the same for 5 years: 100kw/hour for about 8.500 hours per year. In a nutshell quite a lot of energy, a part of the same – approximately 250.000 kWh is repurchased by us and used by the oil mill – while the remaining part – approximately 500.000 kWh – is sold to the network (energy net of system self-consumption). In the winter months, all the thermal energy from the combustion of the biogas that feeds a very normal endothermic engine in cogeneration is used in the mill to heat the cavities of the kneaders, to heat the mill rooms and the house.
Everything has an end or, in our case, a reuse. Indeed the digestate from the digestion of the pate is used with excellent results in the company's olive groves. Digestate is a fertilizer composed of a good 80% organic matter while the remaining part of the mix is made up of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium: an excellent ternary unbalanced towards potassium (about 10%), as you well know, an indispensable nutrient useful for promoting inoleation.
Our little virtuous circle has radically changed our way of seeing and interpreting an agricultural transformation. Until a few years ago, the milling of olives was considered a practice that used innumerable resources. Proud to have finally stopped this method of transformation unbalanced towards consumption, we have decided to start using our little innovation in the sector, putting our old brand in the background, which represents only and only our name, more or less intended as a name business and creating a new brand. Something that would have distinguished us, something evocative and that would have, after a little reflection shown our "mission". After careful study, we decided to incorporate the infinity symbol into the word MY OIL. Infinite, just like our production cycle.
I am proud to start guided tours of our oil mill, by various school groups, approaching an olive tree, taking an olive from it and saying: this is an olive, I take it, I extract the oil, I steal the hazelnut, from the pulp I produce the energy I need to satisfy the same production cycle and I give back to the plant everything I don't need, in the form of organic fertilizer. Nothing could be simpler to explain what is an excellent example of a circular economy reduced to the minimum terms, to do so there was a need for many machines, many investments but only one ideal that of preserving and respecting as much as possible what the earth gives us offers. Always putting the same resources into circulation.
I always tell all those who come close to my little company for one reason or another to try to imagine if all companies were organized like us in the management of what they consider waste and we consider resources.
As usual, I said too much, bringing the production of our extra virgin olive oils into the background for a moment. Production enhanced by a more than green process, appreciated on the markets above all for being excellent products. Only afterwards do customers attracted by the brand realize that the product they have in their hands, as well as being good, respects as much as possible that ecological transition that is on everyone's lips but that we have already implemented for some time.
I take this opportunity to pay homage to the memory of a person who has been missing for over a year now. The engineer, there was no need for other words to indicate the person of with a single noun Gennaro Pieralisi. Great innovator who left an indelible mark on the world of the oil industry. Father of often capricious machines, but nonetheless unique in terms of quality standards and continuous innovation. It is also thanks to those drafts, often drawn on table napkins that his engineers have transformed an idea of his into a drawing, something new, like my Leopards which today allow me not to throw anything away. Thanks to that person, very fond of his suspenders and his thousand scarves, always available to listen to the problems of small mills. When he touched all the fingers with his thumb, you had to stay away from him because he was angry. Thanks for the few times he called me saying “Giovannino, I'm the Engineer”, even when he sent me to Australia. I will remember that person when he entered my oil mill and, paying homage to my work, he exclaimed "Handsome!". I have a bad photo of that moment dated 2013. Most likely this little tribute of mine is shared by anyone who met him.
Surely wherever he is now he will continue to do what he has always done: extracting oil from olives with his machines. Let them be SC, FP, SUPER1, MAJOR, JUMBO, SPI, VANGURD, LEOPARD AND SCORPION, they will continue to bring an all-Italian reality with the name on it Pieralisi in the world.
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