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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."
One for my car... one for me...
Two for my car... two for me...
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.
Butanol has almost the same energy density as gasoline, and burns with less air. Send me a few gallons, and after I rich out the mixture (no fancy computer-controlled mixture for me...), I'll report back!
Oh yeah, here it was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tight_Little_Island
One of the guys poured a bottle of scotch into the tank of his truck, to escape the police that were looking for the, um "stolen" whisky that was removed from a banked ship.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Aye, ittle be just a weee bit Captain, I have to make sure the fuel is of an acceptable quality... *hic*
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Making acetone and butanol with the Weizmann organism is downright ordinary. People stopped doing in the the 1940s mostly because hydrocarbon cracking was cheaper than ABE fermentation. The feedstock isn't particularly unusual. Wonder what they're specifically trying to patent.
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.
Even assuming it's cheaper than oil, unfortunately Jevons Paradox pretty much ensures that any reduction in cost will simply result in an increase in usage. It is predicated on efficiency gains, but is effectively cost reduction.
Deleted
Am I the only one noticing a pattern here.
1. Reputable scientists publish research "X". /. it has totally become Y.
--> e.g.: "On some possible applications of AI-blabla to improve car safety"
2. Same scientists explain X to mainstream journalists, and in the process they simplify the message (sometimes in good faith, sometimes to get PRs).
--> e.g: "Cars will become more intelligent in the next 5 years"
3. Mainstream journalists write articles where X is further stretched.
--> e.g: "May be cars will drive themselves in the next 5 years"
4. Headline of such articles go a further mile in stretching X.
--> e.g.: "Are drivers obsolete?"
5. by the time X morphs on
--> e.g. "Scientists claim that uber-intelligent robotic cars have made drivers redundant. And my home-assembled truck overlord is also baking pizzas. It runs Linux."
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
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.
Butanol, actually.
Butanol, actually.
I hear butanol has a vapor pressure, ignition point, flame propagation rate, and energy content that let it be dropped in essentially straight as a substitute for gasoline, without retuning modern engines.
Does anybody have better info than this rumor?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"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.
Whisky accounts for approximately £2bn of Scotland's £86.3bn GDP.
Nice try though. Check your references before making absurd generalizations like this one. (I'll bet you also didn't know that there are also large swaths of the country that neither produce nor consume Whisky in meaningful quantities. )
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It was implied by the article that the spent grain, draff as it is called, is going to waste. I would really hope that is a mistake in the article.
Spent grain is very nutritious for livestock and unsurprisingly they love it, especially pigs. It's only the alcohol the distillers are interested in, but the farmers and their pigs are interested in the extra nutrients converted by the yeast that remain in the draff. There are also many old, traditional recipes for making bread from spent grain. I know a few that actually brew small beer just to have a supply of spent grain for these recipes.
These "byproducts" are very valuable economically even they might not have a high direct resale value. It's not too unlike metal shops and the filings swept up at the end of the day. I read about a fellow that had arranged to sweep shop floors at the end of each shift for free. After a few years, he had a small team of employees and was covering many shops in the region and turning a good profit. That was before the metal shortage. Once converted to meat or bread they have high value.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Turned green. Didn't move for a few days.
Did he have a strong desire for brains afterward?
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
Leaving home distillation laws aside for the moment, I'd be interested to see if the process could be used by the home distiller.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.