Past Internship Projects

See how MTP2 interns have helped local business

2023

Bozeman Spirits Distillery

Bozeman Spirits Distillery is an small craft award winning distillery founded in 2014. Using mostly locally sourced ingredients they create classic and uniquely Montanan spirits. Unfortunately distilling creates waste water too.

Cindy Ufelle under took this challenge, fining multiple ways to conserve water and by extension cheapen the distilling process. In the companies future the spent grains could also be used as a bio fuel, further reducing waste.

The full case study of Bozeman Spirits Distillery can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Bozeman Spirits Distillery can be found as PDF.

Daily's Premium Meats

Founded in Missoula and retaining a plant there makes Daily's a proud Montanan Company. To “be recognized as the industry’s premier national supplier of consistent, high quality, value-added and innovative pork products using [their] historical expertise," has been Daily's Premium Meats' goal for a long time. Now MTP2 is here to help.

In the curing process tens of thousands of gallons are wasted every year. MTP2 intern Dylan Kessler found a solution to this and a couple of ways to reduce the dependency on fossil fuel electricity.

The full case study of Daily's Premium Meats can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Daily's Premium Meats can be found as PDF.

Front Porch Chocolate

This small Bozeman business has only two workers but is already committed to environmental health and sustainability. This dark chocolate company already uses packaging materials made from beeswax, but MTP2 intern Chidimma Ifeh still found ways to improve.

In the making of chocolate the shell has to be separated from the cocoa nibs. The currents process was producing more waste than the industry average. Chidimma Ifeh found both a process to reach that average and a use for the wasted shells.

The full case study of Front Porch Chocolate can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Front Porch Chocolate can be found as PDF.

Gallatin Valley Food Bank

The Gallatin Valley Food Bank was established in 1982 with a mission to improve food security throughout Southwest Montana. They have partnered with local companies to help more directly too. Fork & Spoon began as a community café in 2011. It is Montana’s first pay-what-you-can restaurant. Her focus is on creating homegrown, scratch-made cooking using locally sourced ingredients whenever possible.

Ume Odum undertook the process of helping these local business wherever possible. Through Ume's internship two major solutions where found to help pollution prevention; saving food waste from landfills and correcting leaks.

The full case study of Gallatin Valley Food Bank can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Gallatin Valley Food Bank can be found as PDF.

Roots Kitchen & Cannery

Karen Nunez Michel helped  Roots Kitchen & Cannery. Through the recommendations given by the MTP2 intern this company could reduce carbon dioxide emission by half and increase production. Roots was given multiple designs and layouts for their production room in order to maximize efficiency while minimizing waste.

The full case study of Roots Kitchen & Cannery can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Roots Kitchen & Cannery can be found as PDF.

Timeless Natural Food

Sophia Seffrood worked through MTP2 to help Timeless Natural Food for their summer internship. With a focus on manpower and wasted energy, they helped this company on their mission of "Better serve the surrounding community, sustainable agriculture, Timeless Natural Food employees, and customers."

The presentation of Timeless Natural Food can be found as PDF.

2022

Native Fish Keepers, Inc.

In 2022, Elissa Ikola under took a project to help Native Fish Keepers, Inc., a local fishery on Flathead Lake, reduce wasted fish biomass. Before the project an upper bound of 80% of the harvested biomass would be considered waste. The project consisted of research into the current process and possible uses for the waste.

The project succeeded in both finding products for the excess biomass to be used in and ideas on how to refine the process, reducing created waste.

The full case study of Native Fish Keepers, Inc. can be found as a PDF.

The presentation of Native Fish Keepers, Inc. can be found as PDF.

Food Product and Development Lab

Located on MSU's campus the Food Product and Development Lab works with communities in both Montana and Senegal. The lab works to produce viable processes of production for nutritious, eco-friendly, and traditional products. Hannah Kempf started the project to help communities in Senegal. The lab had been working on producing a beverage that used indigenous Senegal plants and Kemp's internship focused on the issue of storage.

The existing product required refrigeration and had a short shelf life. The project concluded that the beverage could be dried into a powder and rehydrated later. This would eliminate the need for refrigeration or electricity. The powder could be contained in recyclable paper packages to further reduce waste form the product.

The full case study of Food Product and Development Lab can be found as a PDF.

The presentation of Food Product and Development Lab can be found as a PDF.

Montana Pure Protein

Montana Pure Protein is a Billings company that offers plant products to allow Montanans to intake more sustainable plant-based protein. One of the products they produce is textured vegetable protein (TVP), a meat substitute high in protein. Currently TVP is created when extracting soybean oil. However this can require a significant amount of land and can cause pollution throughout the process. Lentils, in theory can be a substitute for soybeans and potentially have less of an impact on the environment. A theory that MTP2 intern Ravi Kumar Pirati tested.

In the U.S., Montana is the largest producer of lentils, making it a particularly easy substitute here. The lentils are easy to grow in Montana relying on the rain, not irrigation, and no sowing done but air sowing. Lentils are also a legume and will add nitrogen to the soil instead of requiring fertilizer. After doing extensive research, it was found that organic lentils used roughly 1 gal to every 11 gallons used by an acre of soybeans.  Lentils have a little more than a third  of the Global Warming potential. Ravi Kumar Pirati concluded that not only was it possible but likely to save the farmer considerable money and water.

The full case study of Montana Pure Protein can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Montana Pure Protein can be found as PDF.

Bonbon Bouye

Bonbon Bouye is a peanut nutrition bar that was developed by the Montana State Food Product Development Lab in collaboration with Senegalese smallholder women farmer. Dominic Pisaneschi helped the Food Product and Development Lab cut costs and emisions in the productions. The ingredients include a cowpea-corn flour blend, dried saskatoon berries, and multiple others that give the nutrition bar a unique taste. One key part of commercialization is the scale up process where batches go from being “benchtop” size to full production size. This scale-up process usually has many wastes and will be the target of this pollution prevention report. 

Overall, in designing the process for Bonbon Bouye and paying close attention to factors that cause unnecessary waste, some green house gasses can be eliminated. In doing so, the new process saves thousands when combing savings from switching to whole dried cowpeas and electricity costs.

The full case study of BonBon Bouye can be found as PDF.

2021

Tongue River Winery

Marc Hansmeier assisted the Tongue River Winery. Located in Miles City right along the Tongue River, the hot and dry climate demands hardy fruits that can also withstand frigid winters. They are committed to growing and making wine only from fruits that can be grown in Montana. The winery produces about 1200 gallons of wine yearly. Tongue River Winery already has some pollution prevention practices in place but they are eager to see what P2 changes can be made. Their project goal was to save energy through implementing solar panels and find ways to make processes more efficient.

With six different recomendations the Tongue River Winery could prevent significant waste and save money.

The full case study of Tongue River Winery can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Tongue River Winery can be found as PDF.

Pulse Crop Extraction

Grace Beck worked with Montana State University’s Food Product Development Lab. To take advantage of the local Pulse Crops MSUFPDL has installed an extruder with the goal of developing consumer accepted pastas, snacks, and cereals. Each product will be made from lentil flours from local growers rather than traditional commercial wheat or corn flours.

With the lab preparing for production, the goal is to identify where areas of water and energy waste may occur and begin strategizing how to potentially measure and lower those wastes.

The full case study of Pulse Crop Extraction can be found as PDF.

The full presentation of Pulse Crop Extraction can be found as PDF.

Pasta Montana

A local company based out of Great Falls, has been producing "Nature's Best From the Northwest"  pasta for over twenty five years. Water is vital in making pasta especially for creating a vacuum to create the pasta's color. The water for this process was half of all the water used by the facility. The problem under taken by intern Edwin Allan was to reduce the amount wasted in this process.

Upon investigation, Allan found that some of the flow gauges were giving inaccurate readings. Three of the four pumps were operating above the max flow rate. From there Allan discovered they were able to lower the flow by half without losing the required vacuum pressure. The estimated water saved annually was over 13 million gallons, or two thirds of what they had been using on average. The water reduction saved Pasta Montana over $81,000 per year.

The full case study of Pasta Montana can be found as PDF.

The presentation of Pasta Montana can be found as PDF.

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