Posted on 10/22/2014 1:40:50 PM PDT by bestintxas
A start-up company in Scotland is working to capitalize on the tons of waste produced by one of the country’s most valued industries and turn the dregs of whisky-making into fuel. Celtic Renewables, formed in 2011, has refined its process based on a century-old fermentation technique and is now taking the next step toward a commercial plant, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.
Ann M. Thayer, a senior correspondent with C&EN, points out that making whisky requires three ingredients: water, yeast and a grain, primarily barley. But only 10 percent of the output is whisky, and the rest is waste. Each year, the industry produces 500,000 metric tons of residual solids called draff and 1.6 billion liters of a yeasty liquid known as pot ale. These by-products are usually spread on agricultural lands, turned into low-grade animal feed or discharged into the sea.
Rather than inefficiently re-using these materials or letting them go to waste, Celtic Renewables has taken an old industrial process developed to turn molasses and other sugars into chemicals and fine-tuned it to convert draff and pot ale into acetone, 1-butanol and ethanol. The latter two can be used as fuel. The company is scaling up its process with the help of the U.K. Department of Energy & Climate Change, private funds and Bio Base Europe. If all goes well, a commercial facility could be next.
“Well-oiled Remedy”
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
Vegemite
I don’t think it will ever be enough to make a dent in the oil or coal business
“public support”? If that means tax dollars, the answer is no
When Fuel is required to be made from whiskey byproducts, only drunks will be able to drive.
...just don’t ever,ever use wonderful bourbon for anything likefuel!
But what about the cows? They used to like to get drunk eating that mash.
We used to turn it into beef.
sounds like the old ABE fermentation process.
Reminds me of “Big Daddy” Don Garlits’ quote, “Gasoline is for washing parts, alcohol is for drinking and nitro-methane is for racing!”
Biodiesel is pretty dang awesome* and that could, technically, be called a greenfuel scheme
.
(* Granted, this is because the Diesel compression-ignition engine is both more efficient and more robust than a gasoline spark-ignition.)
I’ll drink to that! Must help all we can, you know!....................
Makes more sense than using fresh crops.
““public support”? If that means tax dollars, the answer is no”
The “public” is already supporting the generation of waste by individuals purchasing voluntarily liquor and the “public” getting a lot of tax income from a +/- 50% tax rate as a result.
Are public funds needed to make this commercial? No way.
BTW, I trust you get the humor in both liquor and its waste can be supported. It’s supposed to be funny.
Every little bit that makes Russia or the ME a little less money cannot be a bad thing.
I recall this was actually a Dukes of Hazzard plotline.
Forget that, we need to figure out how to turn waste from fuel making into whiskey!
Maybe they just need us all to pitch in and drink a bit more whiskey?
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