(611f) More Sustainable Winemaking

The wine industry is facing urgent challenges to minimize energy and water usage, wine loss, waste generation while working within the constraints of labor availability. The industry has grown by often scaling up batch processes without introduction of benefits enabled by continuous or semi-continuous processes. Two such processes are those for stabilizing wines from precipitating potassium bitartrate and developing protein hazes. The traditional in-tank approaches result in excess usage of water and energy, loss of wine, and generation of solid waste. Two liquid-solid separations processes are being adapted to benefit the wine industry: Fluidized Bed Crystallization for removing excess potassium bitartrate and Ion-Exchange for removing excess proteins. These approaches are based upon similar chemical and physical interactions to those of traditional in-tank treatments. Our results, which build on prior work, continue to demonstrate their efficacy under a variety of wine chemistries and process conditions and aim to provide the industry with another alternative to existing treatments which can minimize energy and water usage, wine loss and waste generation.