Light Beer: Electric Power From Brewery Waste

An end result of beer making is that it's more than the overindulgent that end up getting wasted: Countless tons of spent organic material are generated by the grains that get removed from the process after they have worked their magic.

Disposal processes that include land application as fertilizer and cattle feed are not adequate to make full use of the aggregated waste stream, and traditional disposal means such as sending to a landfill are simultaneously expensive and representative of a lost opportunity.

As with a well-poured pint, German scientist Wolfgang Bengel clearly has a fine head. Research undertaken by Bengel and his associates at biomass concern BMP Biomasse Projekt has developed a waste reclamation scheme that could allow breweries to generate more than half of their energy needs from the spent grain and process water.

The liquid and solid wastes are introduced along with bacteria into a fermentation tank, where remaining organic solids are broken down into methane. The gas, along with the solid mass that generate the methane, once dried, serve as fuel for steam-powered turbines that in turn generate electricity.

The research team is pretty hopped up about their innovation, and is currently working to draft beer companies to put their reclamation scheme into place, hopefully as part of a broader push for "green" beer manufacturing.

Photo courtesy of Josef Stuefer, via Wikimedia Commons