Some Alternative Strategies Applied to Brewery Spent Grains for the Development of Sustainable Recycling Solutions in the Agro-Food Industry

Brewer’s spent grain (BSG) is a raw material produced during beer production that has a high potential for sustainable reuse. BSG is con sidered an important feedstock for producing several products. Brewer's spent grain (BSG) is the main by-product obtained after wort production commonly used as animal feed. Recently research work has focused on ap plication in different areas, because of BSG’s low cost, large availability, and valuable chemical composition. Brewer's spent grain forms 85% of the total by-products generated. Of the breweries that produce potential by-products, their recovery is an other cost-effective pollution prevention option that can provide a facili ty with significant economic benefits while simultaneously reducing waste production. BSG water content is around 80 - 85 %. Dry BSG content has around 60-63% hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin, protein content is around 22-25%, lipids 8-9%, phenolic compounds 1.7-2%, ash 2.5%. In Albania spent grain is used as feed for animals without any other pre treatment. Our experiment is focused on spent grain pretreatment and sta bilization techniques to extend BSG’s life. BSG pretreatment/stabilization techniques can be employed as a function of their future destination such as energy production, food additives production, using BSG as a substrate for enzyme production, etc. In this paper, we have used three different pretreat ment/stabilization procedures. Thin layer drying technique, alginate treat ment of BSG, and vacuum filtration of BSG with cold and hot water. For each sample, we have monitored drying kinetics based on the remaining water content and BSG’s life.