Anheuser-Busch BERS Process

Being a chemical engineer and working for an engineering design company, I get to work on many types of energy projects. The last somewhat big project I worked on was for a biogas plant that turns cow manure from surrounding feed lots into natural gas. I find biogas processes pretty interesting. You're probably thinking to yourself, "Ok, that's random. What does this have to do with beer?" After reading a few things online today, I found this site:

King of BERS

Through Anheuser-Busch's award-winning Bio-Energy Recovery Systems (BERS), we actually harness renewable energy from our brewing process wastewater. This complex method allows us to capture biogas from the nutrient-rich water. Our breweries then burn this renewable energy source for fuel, supplying up to 15 percent of their on-site fuel needs. Last year, the energy BERS generated for our breweries was enough to heat more than 25,000 homes. We also avoided more than 258 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels by using this renewable fuel.

Today, Anheuser-Busch is the world's largest user of BERS, which is in place at nine of our 12 U.S. breweries and also at our brewery in Wuhan, China. And we've been using this method for more than two decades.

We continually work to make BERS more efficient and research new technology to further improve the process. And we champion BERS as an example of how renewable energy can be found in the most surprising places (who knew brewing process wastewater could help fuel a brewery) as we keep looking for new renewable energy sources.

1. Wastewater resulting from the brewing process is filtered to remove grain and other particles and then piped into large tanks, where the temperature and acidity are equalized;
2. The water is then sent to airtight reactor tanks, where microorganisms - tiny "bugs" that thrive in this low-oxygen environment - feast on nutrient-rich molecules in the water;
3. The bugs digest almost all of these nutrients and produce a renewable biogas;
4. The biogas is siphoned out of the tanks and sent back to the brewery to help fuel boilers that provide energy to run the plant;
5. The pretreated water is then sent to the local wastewater treatment plant, which requires less electricity to treat it as compared to water the plant would have received from the brewery without BERS.

The key to the whole process is the microorganisms, or bugs. "We make sure the bugs are nice and healthy so they can do their business," said Al Beers, an Anheuser-Busch engineer who oversees BERS operations. "All of this is about happy bugs."

And that's how the "King of Beers" has come to be known as the "King of BERS."

I'd love to work on a project similar to this that would blend my fondness of beer with my career all while doing something that's beneficial for the client company and the environment.

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