Explains José Castro, project manager at La Unió Llauradora i Ramadera, that extracting rice straw from the field is not easy when it has rained or the field is still wet, full of furrows. "You cannot enter with a machine in those conditions and that makes our work very difficult, we had to find solutions." With a snow removal machine that does not happen and yesterday they demonstrated it in Sueca, where an innovative rice straw extraction system was presented with one adapted to work in any state of the field.
The machine comes from Germany and is the main novelty of the Straw4Footwear project, which seeks to generate a new industrial value chain based on the development of new materials for the footwear industry from the byproduct of rice straw.
Financed by the Valencian Innovation Agency within its line of Strategic Projects, its consortium is made up of the INESCOP research center, the Miguel Hernández d'Elx University, the footwear company Analco and the Valencian agricultural association.
"Revalue" straw into components with high added value, incorporate it into the footwear sector, as well as "design and test" a new method of extracting rice straw in conditions that until now were not possible due to not being able to enter the plot after mowing due to rain or furrows is the objective of this pilot program that will now continue its course. "It has an interesting adaptation, and now what we must analyze is its operating cost to see how we could adapt it and how much it would cost us," explains Castro, who explains that the tests over these days have been very satisfactory.
The use of rice straw is at the core of many other projects linked to the circular economy, such as the so-called Biogas Route, presented by the Department of Ecological Transition in the last legislature and which proposed creating an entire industry linked to reuse. of organic waste, wastewater, livestock manure and herbaceous remains such as, for example, rice straw.
There are also other circular economy projects, such as Life Reptes, coordinated by the DAM Group (Mediterranean Water Purification), also made up of GENIA BIOENERGY and the Consorci de la Ribera and aims to develop an alternative that valorizes waste by creating Green biohydrogen from Albufera rice straw. It has a duration of five years, from August 1, 2022 to January 31, 2026, and a total budget of 1,646,711.81 euros, with 60% co-financing from the European Commission.
