OC student competes at CNE for innovation award

An Olds College student snagged $5,000 and one of only four finalist spots in a Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) competition for innovation, earning a trip to Toronto to pitch his agri-tech project for a shot at $25,000.

Alex Villeneuve made the trip out east for the CNE's Emerging Innovators Pitch Competition finals, held Aug. 20, after winning the provincial finals during Klondike Days in Edmonton.

Albertan innovators had three minutes each to pitch their projects across four categories, with the winner from each receiving $5,000 and advancing to a second day of competition. From there, two finalists punch tickets to Toronto, to face off against Ontario's two finalists.

"We just have to impress the judges," said Villeneuve before he left. "They are looking for what the problem is, how effective your solution is, the competition, your market strategy, your team, and then if it just makes sense financially."

For Villeneuve, and his company Ceres Solutions Ltd., the problem is that there are 94 million pounds of spent brewing grains coming out of breweries every year in Alberta. They are typically composted, which is expensive, or sent to farmers for animal feed, which often rots in the summer or freezes in the winter.

During his two years in the college's brewmaster program, Villeneuve has been working on a side project, honing a process for growing gourmet mushrooms in the grain waste from breweries. In addition he turns any extra grain into dried animal feed.

"If you are going to compost it, you might as well get a bunch of really great mushrooms first," he said. "Or you might as well get a bunch of really great mushrooms, really great feed, and then compost the leftovers."

Not only is he upcycling the spent grains from the breweries, then upcycling them again into animal feed after the growing process, but he's got a third project in the works to deal with the waste water that he produces.

"There's been a bit of interest from people wanting to make biodiesel out of it," he said. "So hopefully we are going to close the whole loop."

Villeneuve stumbled on the idea his first few days of the brewmaster program, when he had the task of shovelling spent grains at the college brewery into garbage bins.

"I asked my professor 'Oh my god, what are we doing with this?'" said Villeneuve. "He says, 'Oh we are just throwing it in the compost bin.'"

'We could be getting so much more out of that,' Villeneuve thought. The next thing he knew, he was growing mushrooms in zip-lock bags in his dorm room closet.

"I had to squish the water out between two stainless bowls and I was sitting in my dorm room at two or three in the morning trying to get this thing to work, and just wondering what I was doing with my life."

Two years later he's running his own business, out of a warehouse building on the college campus, with interested breweries lined up out the door, and investors buying in.

Right now Villeneuve is basically a one-man operation, doing everything by hand, from pressing water out of the spent grains and growing the mushrooms, to drying out the grains and pressing them into feed.

Now that his growing process has been refined, he's looking to invest in equipment and expand his operation. Currently, he can process about 500 pounds of spent grain a day. With a hydraulic press, he could do 500 pounds an hour.

"There's quite a few points here where I can make an investment and drastically increase my production," he said.

While he came up short at the CNE finals in Toronto, Villeneuve's upcycling mushroom project is going the distance.

"We've kinda built this reputation -- people love the mushrooms," said Villeneuve, who is also an apprentice chef. "They don't taste like regular mushrooms: their texture is better, the flavour is better, the freshness is just incredible compared to a mushroom you buy in the store."

Villeneuve completed the brewing program this year, but will return for two more semesters of open studies, taking agricultural management classes that will complement his work.

Once this year is up, Villeneuve said he isn't entirely sure where he'll land.

"This has kinda been my pride and joy for the last two years," he said. "I think it would be really hard for me to remove myself from the process. I guess only time will tell."

Villeneuve has spent two years optimizing his growing process, taking it from Ziploc bags in his dorm room to 10 foot by 10 foot climate-controlled tents in a warehouse on campus. Here's the process from start to finish.

Villeneuve collects spent grains – garbage bags full of hot, oatmeal-like sludge – which are only used for a few hours in the beer making process before being drained out. Normally they are composted, or sent directly to a feedlot where farmers use them.
- The college brewery alone produces a ton a week.
- Breweries typically pay anywhere from $800 to $2,000 per month to compost the spent grains.
- He gets so much grain that he can't use it all to grow mushrooms, so the extra is turned into feed pellets.

The spent grains are 80-90 per cent water. Villeneuve runs it through a manual press to squeeze out the excess water. If the moisture content is too high, the mushrooms drown; too low and they die .
- It took two years to figure out the magic number.
- He is also working on turning the drained water into a biodiesel.

After pressing, he seals the grains in bags and uses steam to sterilize them, like a pressure cooker.

Then he mixes the grains with something called mycelium, essentially a mushroom starter, kind of like a yeast starter for bread dough.
- The starter is a clone of the first mushroom.
- One jar of mycelium can be split into 20 more.

The mushrooms take two weeks to grow.
- Every 1,000 pounds of grain yields about 200 pounds of mushrooms, in two weeks.
- He tried 10 different species of mushrooms before narrowing it down to two types of oyster mushrooms.

He realized that the grain was less fibrous after the mushrooms grew, and some testing revealed that the protein content had skyrocketed. Now, he's turning the spent-spent grain into a feed product.
- The college will be running trials for sheep this year with the new feed product .