Saturday, May 28, 2011

Iowa State engineer working with fungus for new ethanol food coproduct

I'm not sure most people know that corn ethanol production also results in DDGS animal feed. This article discusses a new food coproduct using a fungus feeding on leftover thin stillage. The result is more food for animals and possibly even people.
Iowa State engineer scales up process that could improve economics of ethanol production | www.news.iastate.edu: "What van Leeuwen and a team of Iowa State researchers are producing is a fungus, Rhizopus oligosporus, that makes a high-quality, high-protein animal feed from the leftovers of ethanol production. The process of growing the fungus also cleans water from ethanol production so that it can be recycled back into fuel production. And the process, called MycoMeal, could one day produce a low-cost nutritional supplement for people."