Cheers

The brewing sector faces significant challenges related to its main waste by-products including wastewater, exhausted ethanol-rich by-products, bagasse or even biogas. The latter two are currently valorised as low-cost animal feed that must be consumed within a week at the most to prevent bacterial growth and heat/electricity generation respectively. All these seemingly useless by-products could be valorised to acquire a higher market value.

Moreover, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are clear examples of facilities that use energy-intensive processes to treat wastewater Anaerobic digestion (AD) of sludge from wastewater treatment and other organic waste reduces the energy requirements of WWTPs while addressing waste management issues related to sludge/waste disposal.

Recent years have also seen an increasing demand for animal protein due to the exponential growth of the global human population and changes in consumption habits driven by globalisation of the markets. Industrial production systems that have detrimental effects on the environment have been developed to meet these food demands. Accordingly, several authors have pointed out the advantages of using insects as an alternative source of animal proteins for human and animal consumption, citing reasons such as their high food conversion efficiency, low greenhouse gas emissions and low overall resource consumption in the production process. Some insect species have a significant content of essential proteins, amino acids and fatty acids and minerals, even more than those provided by farm animal protein.

Meanwhile, biogas – and more specifically biomethane – are attracting interest due to their capacity to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and facilitate development of a sustainable energy supply. Biomethane, which has properties similar to those of natural gas, is a biofuel obtained by means of an expensive process called “upgrading.” There are currently four commonly-used upgrading technologies. One of them, water scrubbing, is a simple process based on the solubility differences between CH₄ and CO₂. It involves an absorption column followed by a purification column in which CO₂ is released into the atmosphere, constituting a detrimental contribution to GHG emissions.

CHEERS is a new biorefinery concept that aims to overcome all these problems.

The CHEERS project is a new biorefinery concept aimed at providing solutions to the challenges currently facing the sector.

The MAHOU brewery and the Lleida WWTP have been selected to test the feasibility of the CHEERS concept by implementing a pilot plant consisting of two platforms: microbial and insect-based.

These two platforms give rise to the following five value chains:

• Bioconversion of brewery yeast and bagasse into insect-based protein flour as an ingredient of protein-rich drinks.
• Conversion of CO₂ into caproic acid as an animal feed ingredient.
• Conversion of CO₂ into a chlorine-based disinfectant.
• Conversion of CH₄ into ectoine as an ingredient in cosmetic products.
• Conversion of CH₄ a Uni-Cellular Protein as a pet food ingredient.