(The Engineer) A Scottish company has revived a defunct fermentation technology to create biofuel from the residues of whisky production. Edinburgh-based Celtic Renewables said it now plans to build a production facility in central Scotland after manufacturing the world’s first samples of bio-butanol from the by-products of whisky fermentation.
Celtic Renewables is a spin-out company from the Biofuel Research Centre (BfRC) at Edinburgh Napier University that has developed its process as part of a £1m programme funded by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) under its Energy Entrepreneurs Fund.
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Celtic Renewables, in partnership with the Ghent-based BioBase Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP), produced the first samples of bio-butanol from waste using a process called Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation earlier this month.
ABE fermentation was first developed in the UK a century ago, but died out in competition with the petrochemical industry. However bio-butanol is now recognised as an advanced biofuel and Celtic is seeking to reintroduce the process to Europe for the first time since the 1960s, using the millions of tonnes of annual whisky production residues as its raw material.
The biofuel is produced from draff – the sugar-rich kernels of barley which are soaked in water to facilitate the fermentation process necessary for whisky production – and pot ale, the copper-containing yeasty liquid that is left over following distillation. READ MORE