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Scottish Scientists Develop Whisky Biofuel
RabbitWho writes "It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'one for the road.' Whisky, the spirit that powers the Scottish economy, is being used to develop a new biofuel which could be available at petrol pumps in a few years.
This biofuel can be produced from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – 'pot ale,' the liquid from the copper stills, and 'draff,' the spent grains.
Copious quantities of both waste products are produced by the £4bn whisky industry each year, and the scientists say there is real potential for the biofuel, to be available at local garage forecourts alongside traditional fuels. It can be used in conventional cars without adapting their engines. The team also said it could be used to fuel planes and as the basis for chemicals such as acetone, an important solvent."
ethanol
IANMOFWF (I am not much of a whisky afficcionado) but I was worried for a minute there. The headline is misleading. They are turning byproducts of the whisky making process into biofuel and not the whisky itself, which would be a travesty indeed.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Scottish Scientists Develop Whisky byproduct Biofuel, is what the headline should read. The current one announces a ridiculous insanity involving using one even more scarce resource when the actual significance is that they've created a use out of a waste product. This is better than something from nothing, since the waste product was itself a problem (though I understand some distilleries were already converting it into fuel to power the plant).
p.s. I never understood the draw to whisky when I'd tried and found "meh" even the supposed coveted bottles that are semi-widely available until I was signed into the Whisky Society in Edinburgh one night. Sure selling whisky by number without identifying the source is probably another marketing tactic but this was one of those rare "wow" moments where all the hype and marketing hyperbole actually seemed understated. Water of life indeed.
Well, butanol at least meets the energy density (pretty close to gasoline) and ready-to-use (can be used in most gasoline infrastructure as-is) criteria, which means it makes a hell of a lot more sense than ethanol. If, of course, they can make it cost-effective.
Even a couple percentage delta in demand for fuel might impact the price dramatically due to inelastic demand: "That is, a 10% hike in the price of gasoline lowers quantity demanded by 2.6%. In the long-run (defined as longer than 1 year), the price elasticity of demand is -0.58; a 10% hike in gasoline causes quantity demanded to decline by 5.8% in the long run." I suppose whether the reverse is true - a 5.8% decrease in demand is necessary to decrease prices by 10% in the long run - depends on how efficient you believe the market for gasoline to be. But there's no good reason to believe decreasing demand by 1% would equal only 1% reduction in price.
What about the Americans? Will we develop a fuel based on Budweiser or Tequila?
Since this was about whiskey, how about using the byproducts of Bourbon, Tennessee, and other American whiskies, just as can be done with the byproducts of Scotch whiskey? American production dwarfs that of Scotland, tequila is gross, and no one educated about beer likes Budweiser.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
This can be done with the Budweiser by products too. The first step in making Whiskey is to make beer. Then you distill the beer, and age the grain alcohol to get whiskey. "pot ale" is the beer left over after distillation. "draff" is the spent grains, used to make the beer. So Budweiser has tons (many thousands) of draff, but no pot ale.
Whether you take the benefit as a decrease in cost or an increase in mobility doesn't really matter in this case. This waste is currently being dumped into the environment anyways, so the net environmental impact of using it as fuel instead should be very small.
Leaving home distillation laws aside for the moment, I'd be interested to see if the process could be used by the home distiller.
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