Greenbelt Resources and New Age Renewable Energy team up for converting dairy processing wastes into bioproducts
Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.
Greenbelt
Resources Corporation (Greenbelt) and New Age Renewable Energy, LLC (NARE) have
announced a technology collaboration agreement to provide a cost-effective
solution for converting dairy processing wastes into bioproducts.
Press release: “Greenbelt
Resources and New Age Renewable Energy Team Up for Joint Project Sales
Collaboration”, 2/7/2019.
Figure 1. Greenbelt ECOsystem (organic waste to
ethanol) set up in New South Wales (taken from the press release)
NARE (a privately held upstate New York based
company) has developed a formulation to convert acid whey, whey permeate and
other milk derivatives into bioethanol and a high quality protein
concentrate. However, adoption of the
technology has been challenged by supply chain issues, scalability and
operational expenses. Collaboration with
Greenbelt resolves those challenges. Greenbelt’s modular design (ECOsystem) enables
low cost operations and provides an ideal platform for incorporating the
innovative fermentation formulation developed by NARE. The result is a
low-energy-footprint, automated, modular, cost-effective solution that helps
improve a dairy processor’s sustainability profile while also saving them
money.
According to the USDA, every year over 3 million
tons of soft dairy products (yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese…) are
produced across USA. By NARE’s calculations, converting the cumulative total of
only the acid whey waste (one of several waste types generated) would produce
nearly 33 million gallons of ethanol and 10 million kilograms of yeast feed per
year. Each ECOsystem solution would
likely have a capacity between 400,000 and one million gallons of ethanol
production per year. Currently the industry estimates less than 15% of acid
whey waste is diverted into anaerobic digesters. The rest is spread over land releasing
carbon into the air as it decomposes.
