Breweries are one the more recent companies to start thinking about their carbon footprint. With the help of a new, (almost) all-consuming piece of machinery, beer factories are starting to save energy by creating their own whilst cutting down on unusable waste.
Some of the ingredients in beer; hops, barley and yeast create a natural gas that can be captured using a closed-loop recycling system and used as fuel to power the brewery. This system, named the Biphase Orbicular Biodigester™ System (or BOB) was developed by PurposeEnergy and is believed to be first and only one in the world. It produces 200 cubic feet of biogas per minute which helps to power the energy-intensive brewing process.
Installed last year in Vermont brewery Magic Hat, it is estimated that a saving of $2 a barrel is being recovered, not an amount to be sniffed out if you’re a large company.
So if you want to save on waste disposal and energy then BOB’s your…brewery recycling system.
P.S- BOB isn’t the only all-consuming alcohol idea, last year we blogged about James Gilpin and his all-consuming whiskey made from human urine. Probably not an experiment to be tried at home.
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
