Fermotein™ production without the use of fossil energy sources

Aanleiding

In the past few years, The Protein Brewery (TPB) has developed and patented an internationally innovative method to produce their protein-rich product Fermotein™.

This highly scalable and sustainable protein-rich nutritional ingredient is retrieved from carbohydrates in biomass residual flows (e.g. corn, sugar beets and potatoes) through a specific and robust fermentation process with the use of specific fungi.

TPB has built up experience with regard to the aerobic submerged fermentation process, which is an innovative concept within the industry of food production. As a next step, TPB is now building a demo plant to realise the first commercial-worthy production volumes.

Doelstelling

TPB does not only want to focus on producing a sustainable product that contributes to the climate transition and the associated CO2 reduction, but also aims to make its entire production process fully sustainable and abolish the use of natural fossil fuels.

For example, it has been investigated how the water flows within the process can be reused and it has been proven that the residual heat from the fermentation process can be reused to dry the end product Fermotein™.

However, for this, the entire production process must be adapted, and a heat pump installation must be engineered and constructed to allow for this sophisticated solution.

Korte omschrijving

Resultaat

With a successful realisation of this project, TPB is estimated to cumulatively save ~218 kton CO2 by 2030 in the Netherlands, left aside their international ambitions to build multiple full-scale production plants across 3 different continents, that all have incorporated this fully sustainable production process and thereby exclude the use of natural fossil fuels completely.