Unlocking value from waste: identifying brewers’ spent grain-specific hydrolytic enzymes and their potential for scalable manufacturing

Project partners: University of Sheffield & Future Greens

Project focus area: Energy and low carbon fuels

Brewers’ spent grain (BSG) is one of the most abundant byproducts of the food and drink industry. Although currently BSG is used as animal feed, there is potential to use it as feedstock for renewable energy generation via anaerobic digestion. This project is a collaboration between a Sheffield-based SME, Future Greens and the University of Sheffield. Future Greens provide high-performance anaerobic digestion technology to the brewing industry with lowered footprint and lower cost of maintenance compared to market leaders. The project tested a panel of microorganisms which can be reliably sourced from repositories for hydrolysing components of BSG. Hydrolytic activity, so far only predicted in some microorganisms, was confirmed and the panel was ranked in terms of suitability for use in anaerobic digestion. The highest performing microorganisms were grown in the novel rotating spiral bioreactor developed at the University of Sheffield. The use of the rotating spiral bioreactor resulted in 6X increased titre of enzymes and 53X increased volumetric productivity. These successes pave the way for industrial application of these enzymes for using BSG for renewable energy generation.

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For more information on this project, contact us, or view all Engineering Biology SPARK Award winners.

This project funding is part of the Engineering Biology Innovation Network, led by Innovate UK Business Connect in collaboration with Innovate UK and UKRI’s Technology Mission Fund. The network’s goal is to progress innovations, create a commercially focused community and foster new consortia to advance innovations towards commercial applications.