Researchers Discover New Uses for Beer Waste

WebProNews
Researchers Discover New Uses for Beer Waste

Researchers at Virginia Tech have discovered new uses for the waste byproducts of beer brewing, including food proteins and biofuels.

Beer has seen a major surge in popularity in the US in recent years, with craft brewing leading the way and challenging some of the old stalwarts. There has also been a corresponding increase in waste byproducts, 85% of which is grain. The spent grain byproduct is roughly 30% protein and 70% fiber.

Traditionally, the spent grain is sold off as cattle feed, or dumped in landfills. It is not used for human consumption due to the high-fiber content making it difficult to digest. Nonetheless, with 30% protein, researches believed it represented a lost opportunity.

“Spent grain has a very high percentage of protein compared to other agricultural waste, so our goal was to find a novel way to extract and use it,” says Yanhong He, a graduate student at Virginia Polytechnic and State University (Virginia Tech).

Haibo Huang, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator, and He developed a wet milling fractionation process that allowed them to recapture up to 83% of the spent grain’s protein. By eliminating the high-fiber content, the protein concentrate can be used as a food source.

There is also hope of taking the fiber-rich waste and turning it into biofuel. Specifically, Huang’s postdoctoral researcher Joshua O’Hair, Ph.D., found “a new species of Bacillus lichenformis in a spring at Yellowstone National Park.” The bacteria is capable of converting sugars to 2,3-butanediol. When the fiber-rich waste was treated and broken down into sugars, the researchers were able to product 2,3-butanediol using the bacteria.

The research is a promising development for the brewing industry, one that could have far-reaching impacts.

Researchers Discover New Uses for Beer Waste
Matt Milano

from WebProNews https://ift.tt/3dDV3c6