Development of innovative technology for Distillery Stillage Management

Alcohol distillery industries continued to be an environmental challenge especially to surface water. In this regard, the scientific advances to treat stillage are slow and are less integrated with advances in agricultural waste valorization studies. Most advanced stillage treatment techniques tested so far are bound to laboratory scale, mainly due to their capital investment cost and operational complexity. Consequently, these industries continue to be environmental burden, especially in developing countries, if not worldwide, towards meeting discharge limits. Significantly, anaerobic-aerobic traditional treatments of stillage are most explored.
Thus, there is a huge gap in research to be filled through an interdisciplinary approach which will develop an integrated treatment package and greatly improve the environmental performance and sustainability of distilleries in the current trend of urbanization. Furthermore, advances in fermentation studies can be linked to this particular industry’s problem through critically evaluating the efficiency of the production cycle. Thus, connecting its waste outputs to valorization systems’ inputs to recover water and other valuables in the face of climate variability and urban water insecurity is demanded.
A group led by Professor Esayas Alemayehu, Dr. Yonas Chebude and PhD students is working on the development of innovative technology for distillery stillage management