Advanced BioFuels USA

by Matt Thompson (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  While ethanol’s coproducts are well-known to the livestock industry, innovative technologies and processes are opening new markets for dried distillers grains with solubles. The aquaculture industry is one of those new markets, and a partnership between White Dog Labs and Midwest Renewable Energy LLC positions the companies to take advantage of it.

Worldwide, aquaculture—cultivating and harvesting fish and crustaceans for human consumption—is a rapidly growing industry. And it relies on high-protein feed, which is where the ethanol industry plays a role.

Kurt Rosentrater, executive director of the Distillers Grains Technology Council and associate professor at Iowa State University’s Department of Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering, says using distillers products in the aquaculture industry isn’t a new trend, but large-scale production is.

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While protein is important, it’s not the only factor aquaculture feed producers need to consider, Rosentrater says. “If we try to put DDGS in an aquatic diet, in many respects it’s similar to putting DDGS in a poultry diet or a swine diet,” he says. “It’s one component of a bigger mixture. So the aquaculture producers have the same kind of challenge that other animal nutritionists have in terms of balancing amino acids and fatty acids and energy.” He says trials have shown that up to 20 percent of an aquaculture diet can be effectively comprised of DDGS. After that amount, growth performance declines, and the fish flesh starts to discolor.

Rosentrater says the benefit that aquaculture feed from the ethanol industry holds over traditional feed, like soybean meal and fishmeal, is its price. “We are, in general, about half the price of soybean meal,” he says.

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White Dog Labs Inc., a biotechnology company, is taking advantage of that opportunity. The company has technology to produce a single-cell protein—ProTyton—which can be used as feed in the aquaculture space. According to Bryan Tracy, CEO of White Dog Labs, ProTyton differs from other ethanol coproducts in that, while it’s a single-cell protein, it’s not yeast. ProTyton is also produced on-demand, he says, rather than as a constant, standard byproduct.

Tracy says White Dog entered the aquaculture feed space after developing micro-organisms to convert sugars into different products. “White Dog has had a history of exploring that for biofuels and biochemicals, but that is a challenging industry to bring new technology into,” Tracy says.

He says the company was exploring other uses for its technology and found a need in the aquaculture industry. “There was a true market need for new protein ingredients, particularly in aquaculture,” he says. “So, that led to us focusing in this space.”

Last fall, White Dog and Midwest Renewable Energy announced a collaboration. MRE is in the process of adding White Dog’s ProTyton production technology to its plant, on a demonstration scale, and hopes to begin production by the end of this year. Eventually, Tracy says, the plant will completely convert from an ethanol plant to a ProTyton production plant. “If all these prove out—markets expand, economics are being demonstrated—the goal would be to convert the entire plant over for ProTyton production,” Tracy says.

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Shanle says MRE’s ProTyton will be sold in Northern Europe, Asia and Indonesia. “It’s kind of right where you would expect aquaculture to be,” he says. He adds that the value of ProTyton is expected to be greater than that of DDGS. “I think, for us, the value that we can add to that bushel of corn, it’s going to be significant compared to just an upgraded version of DDGS.”

Beyond producing a new product and diversifying revenue, Shanle says the technology comes with other benefits as well. “One of the things that we really got excited about was that it allowed us to repurpose a lot of our assets into something that’s just much more value-added,” he says. “But the nice thing is we don’t have to really teach our people a new skill set either.” While the process involves a different type of fermentation, Shanle says, it’s “going to be so analogous to what we already do that we feel like the transition, or the learning curve, won’t be nearly as much of a task.”