Alcohol-free beer has increased in popularity in recent years as manufacturing methods have been refined. At Swedish brewery group Spendrups Bryggeri AB (Spendrups), the beer is brewed like regular beer before being dealcoholized. It is in connection with that process, a residual product is created in the form of 78 percent ethanol, which can now be reused as an input in a number of different products such as windshield washer fluid. But in the long term, there are plans to use the ethanol as biofuel at the brewery in Grängesberg.
Continuously utilizing and reusing residual streams from its production is a central part of Spendrups’ strategy for circular resource use. Spendrups has made investments of nearly SEK 200 million (≈ EUR17 million) in total to reuse residual streams.
Among other things, draff is dried and used as an energy source at the brewery, and the recycling of residual carbon dioxide (CO2) has contributed to reducing Spendrups’ climate footprint.
Now Spendrups is investing an additional SEK 5.3 million (≈ EUR 470,320) in a process that stores the ethanol that arises as a residual product in producing non-alcoholic beer.
Instead of the ethanol becoming waste, it is now used as an input in other products. The total volume of residual ethanol is around 650,000 litres annually, which will in future be transferred to a larger storage tank where it can be collected by third parties, said Jan-Erik Johansson Vik, Production Manager at Spendrups in Grängesberg.
In the first stage, an agreement has been reached with Kemetyl, which will use ethanol as an input in other products.
In the long term, there is the possibility of using ethanol as a biofuel in the brewery’s energy supply.
When used as biofuel, a volume of 650 m3 corresponds to approximately 2,650 MWh, which in turn corresponds to 2.6 percent of the total energy consumption at the brewery in Grängesberg.
Identifying waste streams and ensuring that we can utilize them is something we at Spendrups are actively working on. We have already identified ways to reuse both draff and carbon dioxide, that are both waste products from beer brewing. The fact that we have now found a way to recycle and reuse ethanol – and in the long term be able to use it as an energy source is extremely pleasing. In addition, we are reducing the number of transports for handling waste by around 100 transports per year, said Jan-Erik Johansson Vik.
