At a time when the Australian government closed the “taps” on Australian bars and restaurants in March, it also caused huge losses to local breweries. Thousands of hectoliters of beer have passed through their minimum shelf life and were literally thrown away.
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Instead of the classic pouring into waste, however, they found another use for spoiled beer in South Australia. The beer began to power the Glenelg wastewater treatment plant.
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It is located west of the capital Adelaide and has converted millions of liters of unused beer from local breweries to renewable energy in recent months.
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The plant mixes organic industrial waste with sewage sludge to produce biogas, which is then converted into electricity, which drives the entire plant. It usually produces enough biogas to provide about 80 percent of its energy needs.
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However, the recent influx of beer has taken energy production to new levels, reaching 654 megawatt-hours in a single month, said Lisa Hannant, production and processing manager at SA Water.
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“By adding approximately 150,000 liters of spent beer per week, we generated a record 355,200 cubic meters of biogas in May and another 320,000 cubic meters in June, which is enough to power about 1,200 homes,” Hannant explained to CNN.
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The high calorific value of alcohol and the amount of heat released during combustion make it “perfect” for the process of anaerobic digestion, she added.
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The results of one of the largest evidence that the coronavirus hit Australian breweries hard. In May, Lion Beer Australia, one of the largest breweries in the country, said it had to dispense 90,000 kegs, up to 4.5 million liters of spent beer.
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The nation of brewers also struggled with the problem of an expired hop drink. The coronavirus has hit the business associated with the most popular alcohol in the Czech Republic hard. The economic losses of the brewing industry for the period from March to May of this year exceed the amount of 4.7 billion crowns.
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Beer in Czech channels
Breweries also had to include mostly unfiltered and unpasteurized draft beers, which reached the limit of their consumption during the coronavirus crisis, among the irreversible losses. Almost every company had to pour hectoliters of hop drink into the canals.
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Beer can be poured into the sewer only after prior consultation with the operators of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and only in gradual batches, so as not to overwhelm their technology. However, according to the executive director of ČSPS, Martina Ferencová, some breweries neglected this and subsequently faced high fines for wastewater pollution.
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At the end of May, the General Directorate of Customs registered applications for the disposal of more than 500,000 hectoliters of beer, but it is not possible to determine its total value.
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“It is a sensitive matter for the manufacturer,” Ferencová told a press conference. According to Luboš Kastner, co-owner of the largest restaurant in the Czech Republic, Červený Jelen in Prague and five restaurants in Pilsen, only his company had to get rid of 19 tanks, ie 17,100 liters of beer.
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