In year 2010, the Province of San Juan e Argentina (South America) produced around 81 947
tons of grape pomace, which is a winery waste by-product. Wineries demand a great
quantity of power during the three months that winemaking time lasts, which involve
a high installed electric power. This power is used mainly for refrigerating the must during
the fermentation. The control of temperature is crucial in winemaking as the low
temperature preserves subtle fruit characters. An alternative for reducing the requirement
of power from the utility electric grid is producing it locally, using the residuals generated
by the own wineries. The technology for bioenergy conversion proposed to be implemented
in this research for electricity generation is the anaerobic digestion of grape
pomace. The aim of this research is to develop the thermodynamic equilibrium analysis of
grape pomace anaerobic digestion based on the equilibrium constants for predicting the
potential production of biogas and its composition. In addition, a dynamic model of
a biogas-fuelled microturbine system for distributed generation applications is derived.
Copyright ª 2012, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights