A whiskey-based agrofuels, it is possible!

One team - Scottish course - just to show that two residues from the manufacture of whiskey can be an excellent biofuel, already reputable, butanol. Efficient, easy to recover (since there already), harmless to the environment, this byproduct would give a new source of revenue for distilleries. Just a good idea ...

It was enough to think ... and file a few patents. Martin Tangney has. At Napier University in Edinburgh, he directs the Biofuel Research Centre, a unique research center of its kind on biofuels. His team has worked on the use of two residues from the manufacture of whiskey grains, the solids remaining after the malt wort filtration, and the pot ale into the still liquid recovered at the end of the first distillation.

With these two, it is possible to produce a butanol, or butyl alcohol. This family of molecules with four carbon atoms is well known. We already know manufacturing «biobutanol» used as agrofuels from oats, beet or cane sugar. Unlike ethanol (the acool ethyl), said Martin Tangney, it can be used by any gasoline engine without modification (bioethanol, it can not exceed 20% of fuel a normal engine because it is too volatile and too aggressive toward certain plastics conventionally used).

Martin Tangney, the man who wants to reconcile whiskey and driving. © Napier University Edinburgh

A material found any

However, the university said, the United Kingdom, the whiskey industry annually produces 1,600 million liters of pot ale and 187,000 tons of grains. So found a reserve of any biofuel that could serve as a starting point for a chain. Since the raw material already exists, that agrofuels, such as those from plant waste, avoiding the disastrous consequences of biofuels made from wheat, corn or sugar beet, which monopolize large areas and sometimes lead to massive deforestation.

The research center of Martin Tangney has worked with the Glenkinchie Distillery to finalize a manufacturing process, which is done. It remains only to create a company to produce biobutanol, which is expected soon.

What production will he Achievable? We do not know yet but it is clear that the whiskey industry will not provide any fuel for cars in Europe or even Scottish ... Martin Tangney hopes that the new channel will incorporate 10% of biobutanol fuel vehicles in the UK. It is the proportion of agrofuels that the EU has taken as objective. The Scots are probably the way to do this cheap ...