
Beer Waste Saves Montana Town $1M on Water Treatment - shawkinaw
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/12/804586191/beer-waste-saves-montana-town-1-million-on-water-treatment
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bgentry
The last two sentences appear to undermine the headline:

 _While the Water Reclamation Facility in Bozeman found the chemistry worked,
the logistics of transporting the liquid brewery waste there are too expensive
for now. If regulations get stricter, the plant may consider this approach in
the future._

So did they save $1M using this approach, or are they not even using it after
all?

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asdfman123
I think the solution should be obvious. Cities should get into the business of
producing both clean water AND beer at the same facilities, and create a
separate pipe network to distribute beer on tap to every home.

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boring_twenties
Ha, people's tastes in beer vary too widely for that.

I grimaced at the mere thought of what kind of beer my municipality would
provide.

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bluejekyll
Definitely be a good way to increase voter turnout. “Vote for IPA this year!”,
and town brewer be a competitive elected position.

No downsides.

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boring_twenties
I don't think so. People who prefer light lagers will always be in the
majority, and everyone else will just be unhappy all the time.

Imagine having to pay a municipal tax to get Bud Light piped into your house.
Ugh.

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dhritzkiv
Very neat idea.

On a side note, seeing that photo with the massive tubs of spent grain lying
around makes me gag just thinking about the smell. For those unfamiliar,
leaving out spent grains for a day or two results in a putrid buttery + vomit
smell, likely due to butyric acid.

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inetknght
It can't be much worse than the smell of the blackwater being treated

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AdmiralAsshat
Beer has a long history of byproduct uses. Bakers used to approach the brewers
to see if they could skim some of their excess yeast to use for baking bread.

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Graham24
marmite

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yazaddaruvala
With this article in mind, why don’t breweries become algae farms for biofuels
or fertilizer?

Im sure micro breweries would love to add an additional revenue stream.

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csours
Why don't they just? The answer is usually the same: it would cost more.
Drilling operations regularly flare (burn) natural gas, because it would cost
too much to transport it.

I misread your question, but I'll write my answer anyway:

Wastewater treatment plants do produce fertilizer. There is some concern about
using on plants destined to be human food, due to the bacteria present in
human waste, so it is often used on other crops

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bjelkeman-again
Human waste contains medicines, hormones, heavy metals etc. which the waste
water treatment plants can’t generally remove. You don’t want these things
back into the human food chain, without further treatment.

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oftenwrong
text-only version:
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=804586191](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=804586191)

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aaron695
> Beer Waste Saves Montana Town $1M on Water Treatment

The title on the article has changed from this, which is incorrect. It
referred to a one off upgrade needed without the process that normally used
alum.

> Beer Waste Helps Montana Town Save Money On Water Treatment

"We know the alum that we saved already is about $16,000 a year for sure."

But, as what they are doing is non standard external costs would add up.

But employees love doing novel things so there's the added productivity bonus.

Barley seems to be around 121.71 a tonne, so no real need to get recycled
barley? But then maybe there's something easier than barley that's more
standard and accurate and doesn't risk costly mistakes. Like alum?

