Collaborative Research: Ethanol Plants to Produce Animal Feeds --- Whole Conversion of Corn and Residue to Support Biofuel and Feed Production

从全球角度来看，粮食-能源-水(少数)联系可以被描述为粮食、能源和水的相互关联的资源系统。随着世界人口到2050年扩大到预计的90亿，需要在这三个系统之间平衡不同的资源，以实现不同的用户目标，而不会给提供这些资源的生态系统带来不必要的压力。该项目的目标是为生物能源作物生产与动物饲料生产争夺土地、水和能源的地区开发几个Nexus解决方案。由于玉米生产对乙醇的需求增加，用于动物饲料生产的土地较少。农民经常会用酒糟和其他谷物废料来补充动物饲料。然而，这种饲料没有被猪和家禽有效地消化，导致养分浪费和养分流失到地表水。明尼苏达双城大学的胡研究小组与大连理工大学、广西大学、北京工商大学和北京师范大学的中国合作伙伴合作，提议在玉米乙醇加工过程中开发一种真菌发酵步骤，将玉米秸秆和其他农业残渣转化为动物饲料，以便更好地被猪和家禽利用。这一步骤最终将降低玉米-乙醇生产过程的能源成本，并减轻对相互关联的少数生物能源生产和动物饲料生产系统的影响。通过测试各种农业残留物，研究人员将确定猪和家禽饲料营养增强的不同机会，这将导致这些动物更有效地消化，并减少未完全消化的饲料中的营养流失。通过玉米和选定的农业残留物的全部转化，首席研究人员研究小组将与中国4所大学合作，在互联的食品-能源-水(LOW)系统中支持生物燃料和饲料生产行业。饲喂单胃饲料的牲畜通常用玉米酒精发酵过程的副产品玉米秸秆喂养，以降低乙醇生产成本。虽然适合作为单胃牲畜的饲料，但不容易消化。废渣消化效率低导致牲畜对养分的摄取量较低，从而增加了动物粪便中养分的流失。研究人员计划研究在与玉米乙醇生产整合的过程中，通过真菌发酵这种废渣以及菜籽粕等其他残留物来提高这种饲料的消化率的方法。首先，他们将评估这些副产品的消化效率，并将其与传统的玉米-豆粕日粮和未经处理的玉米-秸秆日粮进行比较，以确定废渣和残渣的最佳组合。一旦确定了优化的饲料混合物(S)，将使用生命周期分析和技术经济分析来确定新饲料从合成到消化和废物处理的潜在经济和环境影响。这项研究可以通过开发更高价值的玉米乙醇发酵副产品来降低玉米乙醇生产的成本和对环境的影响，从而使美国和中国的生物能源生产受益。研究人员计划通过社区外展、高中项目和夏令营让苗族社区参与进来，该社区是一个代表性较低的亚裔社区，旨在告知这些利益相关者如何增加他们的玉米乙醇生产收入，同时有利于环境并减少当地少数Nexus人的压力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus, from a global perspective, can be described as the interconnected resource systems of food, energy, and water. As the world's population expands to the expected 9 billion by 2050, there will be a need to balance difference resources across these three systems to obtain different user goals without putting undue strain on the ecosystems that provide these resources. The goal of this project is to develop FEW Nexus solutions for regions where bioenergy crop production competes with animal feed production for land, water, and energy sources. Due to the increased demand for ethanol from corn production, there is less land for animal feed production. Farmers will often use distiller's dried grains with other grain waste products to supplement animal diets. However, this feed is not digested efficiently by swine and poultry, leading to wasted nutrients and nutrient run-off to surface waters. The Hu research group at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, in collaboration with Chinese partners at the Dalian University of Technology, Guangxi University, Beijing Technology and Business University, and Beijing Normal University, propose to develop a fungal fermentation step during corn-ethanol processing to convert corn stillage, along with other agricultural residues, to animal feed that can be better utilized by swine and poultry. This step will ultimately reduce energy costs for the corn-ethanol production process and mitigate impacts to the interconnected FEW systems of bioenergy production and animal feed production. By testing various agricultural residues, the researchers will identify different opportunities for nutrient enhancement for swine and poultry feed which will lead to more efficient digestion by these animals and reduce nutrient run-off from incompletely digested feed.Through the whole conversion of corn and selected agricultural residues, the principal investigator's research group, in collaboration with 4 Chinese universities, will support both the biofuel and feed production industries in interconnected food-energy-water (FEW) systems. Livestock with monogastric diets are typically fed with corn stillage, a by-product of the corn-ethanol fermentation process to reduce the cost of ethanol production. While suitable as feed for monogastric livestock, this stillage is not easy to digest. The inefficiency of stillage digestion leads lower nutrient uptake by livestock and, subsequently, the increase of nutrient run-off from animal waste. The researchers plan to study methods to improve the digestibility of this feed through fungal fermentation of this stillage, along with other residues such as rapeseed meal, during integration with corn ethanol production. First, they will evaluate the digestion efficiency of these co-products in comparison to traditional diets of corn-soybean meal and untreated corn-stillage diets to determine the best combinations of stillage and residues. Once the optimized feed mixture(s) is/are identified, life cycle analyses and techno-economic analyses will be used to identify the potential economic and environmental impacts of the new diets from synthesis to digestion and waste treatment. The research could benefit bioenergy production in both the US and China by lowering the cost and the environmental impact of corn ethanol production through the development of a higher-value byproduct of corn ethanol fermentation. The researchers plan to engage the Hmong community, an underrepresented Asian community, through community outreach, high school programs, and summer camps designed to inform these stakeholders of ways to increase their corn ethanol production income while benefiting the environment and reducing strain on the local FEW Nexus.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.