Great day – visit to Usina Vale do Ivai in the morning – sugar and alcohol production plant – always learn something new when I go there.
It’s one of the most self sufficient industries I know of:
– Sugar cane by itself is a renewable source of energy
– The fibers of the sugar cane are burnt to produce enough electricity for the entire plant + surplus to sell back to the grid
– The soot from the burnt fibers is spread on the soil as a fertilizer
– The unused/old yeast is used as an additive to livestock feed
– The “vinhaca” – a bi-product of the fermentation process is used as a fertilizer as well
– The yeast-cream is bought from breweries around the country to produce more dried yeast, which comes with 6 alcohol by the way, for “free”
– The residue from the sugar process is sent back into the alcohol plant to extract even more sugar
– The water used to wash and cool is always filtered and could be bottled for drinking
… and the list goes on…
In any case… after the visit we had lunch at the farm, had a nap and headed towards Londrina – only an hour and a half away.
There we met Otto and Guilherme who rode their motorcycles (BMS 1200GS and a BMW 800S) from Sao Paulo to meet with us.
Later on we went to another cousin’s house – Adriana Carioba – to have some beers then dinner.
Very pleasant dinner at a Japanese place in town.
All drunk from Saque now going to bed 🙂