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Feature
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Written by Sabrina Deparine
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Monday, 23 August 2010 09:58 |
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Page views: 1589 |
It seems that the popular alcoholic drink will soon have an alternate product. No, this is not something that heavy drinkers will be happy about…
 A team of scientists from the Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland has just filed for a patent for a new biofuel product derived from the by-products of whiskey distillation. According to the team, this new type of biofuel can be used even on ordinary vehicles, without the required modifications to make the engine compatible with biofuels.
The team has been conducting research through the university’s Biofuel Research Center about this new whiskey-based biofuel for the past two years. The process basically uses two main by-products from whiskey production namely pot ale and draff. Pot ale is the liquid that comes from the whiskey production copper stills whiel draff is the spent grains. These are used to produce butanol that can be converted to fuel.
Scientists claim that that biobutanol can be the future of biofuels as it can give 30% more output power than ethanol. It can also be used to produce other green renewable biochemicals like acetone.
With this finding, the university is planning to form a spinoff company that can handle and facilitate the commercial opportunity of butanol. Hopefully, this will soon be available at petrol pumps.
This whiskey-based biofuel project will definitely benefit Scotland. The USD 6.2 billion whiskey industry is one of the biggest markets in the country that is capable of producing 1.6 billion liters of pot ale and 187,000 metric tons of draff per year. Indeed, this presents a great potential for making the biofuel industry sustainable.
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