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.

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.

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