Brewer’s spent grain as substrate for enzyme and reducing sugar production using Penicillium sp. HC1

Brewer’s spent grain (BSG) is the main solid waste from the brewing process. It is recognized as a valuable resource for biobased industries because of its composition, high availability, and low cost. The objective of this study was to employ BSG as a substrate to produce the enzymes endoglucanase, cellobiohydrolase, β-glucosidase, and xylanase, as well as reducing sugars using Penicillium sp. HC1. For enzyme production, we evaluated BSG submerged fermentation at different concentrations (1%, 3%, and 5%, w/v) and two sources of nitrogen (yeast extract and ammonium sulfate) on different days (6, 10, and 12) in a 100 mL Erlenmeyer flask. The highest enzyme activity was obtained after 10 days. The enzyme extract obtained using 3% BSG (w/v) and 5 g L-1 of ammonium sulfate showed the highest xylanase activity (25013 ± 1075 U L-1). Using BSG 5% (w/v) without nitrogen supplementation, the endoglucanase activity was 909.7±14.2 U L-1 while under the same conditions but using BSG 3% (w/v), the β-glucosidase and cellobiohydrolase activity was 3268.6 ±229.9 U L-1 and 103.15±8.1 U L-1, respectively. Maximum reducing sugar concentrations using an enzyme dosage of 1000 U g-1 of xylanase were: 2.7 g L-1 xylose, 1.7 g L-1 arabinose, and 3.3 g L-1 glucose after 6 h of hydrolysis. Results demonstrated it is possible to produce enzymes and reducing sugars using Penicillium sp. HC1 and BSG as substrate and BSG grinding only as pretreatment.