BANFF, Alta. – A new form of processing proves ethanol can be made from barley but only if it makes good business sense.
The barley bioproducts opportunities project commissioned by the Alberta Barley Commission and the Western Barley Growers Association found it could fit into the biofuel industry. A final report is expected this spring, said Carman Read, who is leading the project.
All results so far are better than expected.
“It has potential to put barley in the biofuel game,” Read said at the annual commission meeting in Banff Dec. 7.
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Researchers from the University of Alberta found a number of products including fats and vitamin E that result when processing barley into ethanol, but few are commercially viable now, said business consultant Brian Kelly.
Any project must prove to be a low enough risk for lenders and others to finance. At this point, no one is ready to run commercial volumes on many of the byproducts.
“In the end, all of this comes down to a business decision,” he said.
The researchers found barley has a high starch component between 55 and 62 percent of the total kernel, but its fibre content makes it more viscous than some other grains now in use. They developed a new approach to releasing the starch that also provided additional byproducts that could make the ethanol side more profitable.
“Prior to two years ago, the enzymes that would reduce the viscosity in barley to make it into ethanol did not exist,” Kelly said.
The results proved exciting because they could convert the starch in barley to ethanol at a rate almost equivalent to corn.
The barley distillers grain was bright yellow with no caramelization and its digestibility was better than corn, said David Bressler of the university.
Using a low temperature and modified enzyme approach, other byproducts like vitamin E were not lost compared to the more traditional ethanol production process.
