News
Protein from residual streams of forest industry

The test resulted in
confirmation of the plant being suitable for development of different
biorefinery products.

This trial is one part of a
European research project converting production of single cell protein from
residual streams from the forest industry. It can be used instead of fishmeal
in fish feed. Today, fishmeal production is an environmental threat as large
amounts of fish are caught and then ground to fishmeal.

Single cell protein consists
of micro organisms rich in protein which can be produced by cultivation in
bioreactors. The micro organisms can grow on organic residual streams from the
forest industry, a good way to transform forest into food.

"Before the trial run at the
SP Biorefinery Demo Plant we did a lot of tests, first on laboratory scale and
later in the Processum pilot bioreactor," says Björn Alriksson, research and
development engineer at Processum responsible for the project. "It has been
ideal to be able to do trials of this kind from laboratory scale via pilot
equipment to demo scale, all within the same geographic area."

"When doing this trial we
looked closely at how well this equipment is suited for aerobe fermentation
processes," says Alriksson. "We used filamentous fungi, which grew on a
residual stream from the Domsjo Mills. We harvested the fungi, dried them and
ground them to a powder, marking it possible to use as an ingredient in fish
feed. Right now a project partner in Iceland is doing a trial feeding Tilapia
fish with a feed containing our protein."

The trial has been made
possible by financing from the Swedish Energy Agency and VINNOVA.