Scotland's Cars Could Soon Run on Whiskey Byproducts

[Kilted Jeeper]

if you are in to following the latest on green energy and biofuels, you might find this article interesting.....


http://www.dailytech.com/Scotlands+C...ticle19375.htm

Pour yourself a nice cool glass of whiskey biofuel, it's been a long day


The Scottish may have struck on a brilliant idea of how to apply their favorite alcoholic drink -- whiskey -- to improving the auto industry.

Scotch Whiskey, Scotland's drink of choice, is renowned worldwide for its smooth taste and full flavor. Scotland produces approximately 150M liters of the spirit yearly. That production earns Scotland over $6.24B USD annually.

That production leads to a lot of byproducts -- which largely are discarded. Researchers at the Edinburgh Napier University have cooked up a method to end that waste, instead turning two of the main byproducts -- "pot ale", the liquid from the copper stills, and "draff", the spent grains – into biofuels.

The team used samples from Glenkinchie Distillery to test their process. The new process produces butanol instead of the much-maligned ethanol biofuel. Butanol is generally considered a more useful biofuel as, unlike ethanol, it can be free blended into gasoline at any ratio without special engine considerations. It delivers 30 percent more power by volume than ethanol, as well. And it's the starting point to producing many useful chemicals, such as the industrial solvent acetone.

The team adapted a 100-year-old technique used to make butanol and acetone from sugar. They've patented their refined method and created a startup to market the technology.

Professor Martin Tangney, who led the project, says it will play a critical role in helping Scotland, England, and the rest of the United Kingdom meet the European Union's 2020 target for biofuels to account for 10 percent of total fuel sales (similar to mandates in the U.S.). He states, "What people need to do is stop thinking 'either or'; people need to stop thinking like for like substitution for oil. That's not going to happen. Different things will be needed in different countries. Electric cars will play some role in the market, taking cars off the road could be one of the most important things we ever do."

Assuming the researchers can get a liter of biofuel per liter of whiskey produced (which may be a reasonable assumption as production waste far outweighs the current product), the industry could eventually produce almost 1M barrels of butanol per year (there's 158 liters in a standard barrel of oil). Mass adoption seems feasible, given that there are only around 100 refineries in Scotland. The UK (as a whole) uses about 1.8M barrels of oil a day, so this still would only be a small contribution, albeit a significant one.

Dr. Richard Dixon, of WWF Scotland, cheered the news, stating, "The production of some biofuels can cause massive environmental damage to forests and wildlife," he said. "So whiskey powered-cars could help Scotland avoid having to use those forest-trashing biofuels."

For Scotland it might finally be a good idea to have "one for the road" -- in whiskey biofuel, that is.

[macshorty]

Help Help my car is drunk!!!

In all seriousness though, this is actually pretty cool. We don't have to tear down forrests or process compost piles. The product is at the bottom of the stills.

[MacSaorsa]

I love hearing about new tech that comes up with a good use for a waste product. Plus, this gives me an excuse to drink more whiskey - I can claim that I'm reducing my carbon footprint!

[Bugbear]

Disclaimer: this post is intended in jest.

That's cool, and a neat idea; hope it works out well. I happen to be feeling curmudgeonly and skeptical today, though.

That is approximately 1 million out of 657 million barrels per year, which appears to be approximately .15 percent (point one five, if I did the math right) of the annual oil* consumption in the UK; assuming you can really compare Butanol to oil in barrel form.

You guys aren't drinking anywhere near enough whisky!
In fact, if they couple this with the breathalyzer car starting devices, you might actually take a bite out of the 657 million barrels of oil.


*oil is used for a whole bunch of other things other than petrol and it isn't clear if that is accounted for in the numbers; your mileage per drink may vary.

[Pleater]

It looks as though the process could use other substances, once it is set up and running the waste products from brewing, processing sugar beet and other vetetables and probably fruits could be used, plus biomass from farms.

As the original process was discovered 100 years ago - the world could be a very different place if butanol had been introduced as a fuel for the still developing car industries, rather than petroleum.

Developing dwarf forms of grain might have been counter productive, if the straw could be used for fuel, devising a system for harvesting potato haulm might have made someone's fortune, or any of the other parts of plants not used for anything now could have become an important source of fuel.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

I wonder what the Scots are using to fertilize their grains, Pleater...? Jock should know that. I don't think they grow "GM" crops in the UK anymore, though.

Here's a couple of articles on interesting alternative processes.

"Sun-powered device converts CO2 into fuel," New Scientist (February 18, 2009 ).
"Bacteria engineered to turn carbon dioxide into liquid fuel," ScienceDaily (December 11, 2009).

[wildrover]

That is awesome!

I will drink a couple glasses of whiskey this evening in celebration, and to encourage your budding startup.

-Sean

[Frank McGrath]

Electric Cars are the cars of the future. At least I keep hoping.

[Pleater]

I'm not at all sure that electric cars are a good way to go - they are just SO expensive in many ways.

An easily stored, transported and utilised high energy liquid that can be made from the waste products of agriculture, food processing and the brewing/distilling of alcohol seems (to me) much more sensible.

It is using what you have got, but don't want, to make something everyone would like to have, and without a lot of fuss and bother, so as long as the numbers are sensible and they seem to be as butanol can be made without having to divert raw materials or major resources, then it can be sold for use at the petrol pump to put in the cars running around at the moment with only small or even no adjustment.

There were tests of GM crops done in the UK, but only under protest. Our agriculture is very different from that in the US, and farmers had grave concerns that growing - for instance - a weedkiller resistant crop could lead to the resistance being transmitted to related weeds.

The biologists amongst us were also concerned that the pollen from a resistant crop - being so easily moved around - could lead to there being nothing but the resistant strain being grown, as seed crops could not be isolated from the environment.

Assurances were given that if there was an exclusion zone of X miles around a field growing a seed crop it would keep it from being crosspollinated.

When the first crops were sown beekeepers across the country sent in samples of pollen from their hives and it was found that the X miles was nowhere near large enough, and that there would probably always be some seed (and by extension, related weeds) which was pollinated by the resistant strain of a crop.

Combined with the increased use of pesticides which a GM crop allowed, the concept of their usefulness was questioned.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[Bugbear]

Yes, Pleater, I understand, and I think we are mostly on the same wave length.

1. Where does a lot of the "rare earth" materiel for the magnets for all the electric cars et al come from?
2. They say they are now able to put a termination gene in the GM crops that keeps the pollen from being viable, or something like that. However, plants do swap genes through parasites, and more importantly, introducing a gene into the gene pool of an ecosystem can cause alleles to arise a little like a sympathetic vibration, or filling gaps created by the expantion of the gene pool.


It is all very, very complicated and unpredictable.