Rice-Based Distillers’ Dried Grains from Bio-Ethanol Production, a Potential Source of Protein for Food Application

Abstract

Several bioethanol plants in Vietnam using rice or cassava as raw materialsgenerate a large number of by-products in the form of wet distillers spent grain, which have been underutilized with simple treatment for animal feeding. In this work, the biochemical and nutritional values such as protein (amino acid profile), lipid, fiber, ash, starch, calcium and phosphorous of dried distillers’ grain (DDG) collected from different bioethanolfactories in Vietnam were assessed. The DDG samples were shown to vary in nutrient compositions which depended either on raw materials or ethanol processing technology. Among, rice DDG was shown as the most nutritively valuable with very high protein content (55-80% of dry matter) and appropriate amino acid profile whereas cassava DDG was characterized by a high fiber content and a low protein content (13-16%). The protein in rice based DDG could be enriched by extraction/precipitation and applied for food products. The obtained data suggest that the by-products from rice-based bioethanol are very potential and promise to be used efficiently as ingredients not only for the animal feed industry but also for the food industry.