Energy efficiency and lower production costs for the cork industry, is what the ERGOSUBER project is about.
ERGOSUBER is an innovative project with which it is intended to improve the production processes of the cork industry.
It aims to introduce renewable energies into the companies that process cork,
in particular solar energy and biomass, with a view to saving energy costs in cork processing.
Besides, it also proposes an alternative solution to purifying the residual water generated by boiling cork,
and intends to extract a series of compounds present in this water, of commercial interest, to help endow it with value.
The main use of cork is in bottling.
To make it usable, cork has to be boiled for at least an hour.
With this in mind, ERGOSUBER has applied an advanced technology based on solar energy.
The work carried out so far, jointly with the solar platform of Almería,
which is another of the members of the project,
is the design, development and installation of two prototypes on a semi-industrial scale, here on IPROCOR's premises.
One of the prototypes is an innovative solar concentrator system
with which you can get close to two hundred degrees C,
a temperature that can't be reached by conventional thermal collectors.
The range of this temperature allows us to maintain the ninety-five degrees necessary for boiling cork.
In addition, the other prototype is one of solar decontamination in which,
with the optimal combination of reactant and solar radiation, we intend to purify the residual waters.
Portugal and Extremadura are the world's main producers of cork,
and this is why developing this project in the Euroace region is important.
The results will be of great benefit to the cork-producing community.
The result expected is finding, through the tests carried out on both prototypes, the optimal, most viable solution,
from both the technical and economic perspectives,
which permit the cork-producing industries of the EUROACE region
to improve their competitiveness and save on production costs.
This is how it helps to boost a sector fundamental to the economy on both sides of the frontier.