Beer Waste to Energy: Anheuser-Busch's BERS System
by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis, MO on 06.15.07
While St. Louis-based brewing giant Anheuser-Busch has only jumped into organic brewing relatively recently, according to this morning's Post-Dispatch, the company has been involved in alternative energy development for over two decades. BERS is a very appropriate acronym for the company's "bio-energy recovery systems," which not only pretreat wastewater from 9 of the company's breweries worldwide, but also extract methane from anaerobic bacteria that break down organic matter in the wastewater.
According to P-D writer Jeremiah McWilliams,
In St. Louis, the process starts when wastewater runs in pipes from the brewery to the BERS facility, which is wedged into a complex next to an old locomotive repair shop near the Mississippi River.Employing this process creates multiple benefits. First, the methane created by the closed-loop system can supply between 10 and 15 percent of the energy needed for the breweries that use it. In St. Louis, the system's success at treating wastewater has allowed the local sewer district to close down an aeration facility, saving $250,000 a year in energy costs (not to mention CO2 emissions). Finally, BERS produces another product for A-B to sell: "Over the last two years, the company has sold about 4 million gallons of the "biomass" created in the BERS process to other companies so they can replenish their own energy-capturing systems."Screens snag large solids such as pieces of spent grain. The filtered water is collected in 1.2-million-gallon equalizer tanks, where temperature and acidity are kept within acceptable ranges.
The wastewater is then sent to airtight reactor tanks. There, anaerobic bacteria — microscopic "bugs" that live without oxygen — swarm around the small organic particles still in the water. The bacteria munch on the organic materials, forming millions of flakes of sludge — or biomass — a few millimeters wide.
The idea is to "make sure (the bacteria) are nice and healthy so they can do their business," said Jeff Pitts, the brewery's manager, during a recent tour of the BERS facility. "All of this … is about happy bugs."
As the bacteria — "the guys," as Pitts calls them — digest the material, they produce methane. The gas is siphoned out of the tanks and back into the brewery, where it helps to fire the boilers that drive the facility's machinery. The newly processed wastewater is sent to the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District.
A-B processes an average of 5.5 million gallons of wastewater every day at the St. Louis brewery, its largest. The company says BERS reduces organic waste from its breweries by more than 80 percent. That, in turn, cuts the strain on sewage treatment systems.
While one can definitely argue over whether A-B produces the best beers in town (I prefer Schlafly's myself), there's no doubt that the maker of Budweiser and Busch deserves raised glasses for this innovation in industrial ecology. ::St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Beer: The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
-- Homer Simpson
Welcome to the 20th century ABB. New Belgium Brewing not only produces far superior beer, they've been doing this for many years. New Belgium also uses wind power for their electrical needs.
http://www.newbelgium.com
Matt -
Try a reading comprehension course next time. The very first sentence of the article ends "the company has been involved in alternative energy development for over two decades."
That's a bit longer than New Belgium has even been in business (1991) and quite a bit longer than NB has been buying wind power (1998).
But can't let a "good news" article go by without a bit of snark and a plug for your own pet company, eh? Although, they probably do produce better beer...
Nice to see corporate giants embracing win-win solutions. The article doesn't mention any potential to use the digested water for further industrial process uses, recharging it to groundwater or irrigation uses. There's probably heat recovery that could also be done to recover still more energy. Now if they could just back-engineer some flavor into their beer...
I'll still probably continue to favor the world class micro brew made about a quarter mile away!
No mention of what A-B does with the solids from the brewery process. Lots of breweries sell the mash as animal feed. It could also be bio-digested, and since the mash is all food grade there wouldn't be any problems using the digested materials as high quality composts.
Jon,
I worked at a trucking company that would pick up waste grain from Busch for use as animal feed. Busch has doing this since 1899.
http://www.abenvironment.com/timeline.asp
P.S. I'm Sam Adams fan
Wow. Beer snobs AND tree huggers.
You must be so popular.