Fungal Biovalorization of a Brewing Industry Byproduct, Brewer's Spent Grain: A Review

Evaluating the potential applications of brewers' spent grain in biogas generation, food and biotechnology industry: A review

Breweries, as the major users of fossil fuels, are constantly under economic and environmental pressure to minimize energy consumption and residual management costs. Biogas generation from brewing wastes is a realistic solution for significantly reducing fossil fuel use. Brewers' spent grain (BSG) forms about eighty per cent of the total wastes from a brewing plant. BSG has a high cellulose and non-cellulosic polysaccharides content which makes it potential for biogas production. This paper reviews the potential applications of BSG as an alternative substrate for production of biogas and the recent achievements which have been attained in anaerobic digestion (AD) technology. The usability of BSG in diverse technologies including production of animal and human food and as a medium for growing microorganisms and enzymes is reviewed. The chemical processes involved in producing biogas from BSG are discussed.

The Potential of Brewer’s Spent Grain in the Circular Bioeconomy: State of the Art and Future Perspectives

Brewer’s spent grain (BSG) accounts for approximately 85% of the total mass of solid by-products in the brewing industry and represents an important secondary raw material of future biorefineries. Currently, the main application of BSG is limited to the feed and food industry. There is a strong need to develop sustainable pretreatment and fractionation processes to obtain BSG hydrolysates that enable efficient biotransformation into biofuels, biomaterials, or biochemicals. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive insight into the availability of BSG, chemical properties, and current and potential applications juxtaposed with the existing and emerging markets of the pyramid of bio-based products in the context of sustainable and circular bioeconomy. An economic evaluation of BSG for the production of highly valuable products is presented in the context of sustainable and circular bioeconomy targeting the market of Central and Eastern European countries (BIOEAST region).

Valorization of Brewers’ Spent Grains: Pretreatments and Fermentation, a Review

Brewers’ spent grains constitute a valuable byproduct of the beer industry. They are characterized by a rich nutritional composition consisting of around 70% lignocellulosic fibrous material, 20% proteins, 10% lipids, in addition to vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and phenolic compounds. These spent grains are produced in large amounts all through the year, are cheap, and lack economically feasible applications. Nowadays, 70% of these spent grains are used as animal feed, 10% are used for biogas production, and the remaining 20% are disposed in landfills. Due to the aforementioned facts, alternative uses of the brewers’ spent grains are highly sought-after. In fact, this nutrient-rich industrial by-product makes it a very good candidate for valorization through biotechnological processing, particularly microbial fermentation. After applying the needed pretreatments, using brewers’ spent grains as a substrate in submerged and solid-state fermentation of different microorganisms leads to the production of various value-added compounds such as organic acids, amino acids, volatile fatty acids, enzymes, vitamins, second-generation biofuels and other products.

A New Method to Overcome Carboxyamide Formation During AFEX Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass

Lignin-carbohydrate complexes (LCCs) in the plant cell wall are responsible for providing resistance against biomass-degrading enzymes produced by microorganisms. Four major types of lignin-carbohydrate bonds are reported in the literature, namely, benzyl ethers, benzyl esters, phenyl glycosides, and acetyl ester linkages. Ester’s linkages in the plant cell wall are labile to alkaline pretreatments, such as ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX), which uses liquid or gaseous ammonia to cleave those linkages in the plant cell wall and reduce biomass recalcitrance. Two competing reactions, notably hydrolysis and ammonolysis, take place during AFEX pretreatment process, producing different aliphatic and aromatic acids, as well as their amide counterparts. AFEX pretreated grasses and agricultural residues are known to increase conversion of biomass to sugars by four- to five-fold when subjected to commercial enzyme hydrolysis, yielding a sustainable feedstock for producing biofuels, biomaterials, and animal feed. Animal feed trials on dairy cows have demonstrated a 27% increase in milk production when compared to a control feedstock. However, the presence of carboxamides in feedstocks could promote neurotoxicity in animals if consumed beyond a certain concentration. Thus, there is the need to overcome regulatory hurdles associated with commercializing AFEX pretreated biomass as animal feed in the United States. This manuscript demonstrates a modified pretreatment for increasing the digestibility of industrial byproducts such as Brewer’s spent grains (BSG) and high-fiber meal (HFM) produced from BSG and dry distillers grains with soluble (DDGS), while avoiding the production of carboxamides. The three industrial byproducts were first treated with calculated amounts of alkali such as NaOH, Ca(OH)2, or KOH followed by AFEX pretreatment. We found that 4% alkali was able to de-esterify BSG and DDGS more efficiently than using 2% alkali at both 10 and 20% solids loading. AFEX pretreatment of de-esterified BSG, HFM, and DDGS produced twofold higher glucan conversion than respective untreated biomass. This new discovery can help overcome potential regulatory issues associated with the presence of carboxamides in ammonia-pretreated animal feeds and is expected to benefit several farmers around the world.