Mark Megahan
Professor Martin Tangney is the kind of guy you want to have around if you’re shipwrecked on a desert island. As leaders of all the worlds major nations gathered in Glasgow, the founder of Scottish biotech Celtic Renewables took the opportunity to inform the public how his win-win solution for everyone in the whisky business works.
Whisky waste for fuel
The big United Nations COP26 climate summit gathering in Scotland was the setting he needed for Professor Tangney to teach consumers around the world about an enjoyably sustainable practice.
Everyone loves scotch whisky and the distilleries who supply their blends of ambrosia end up with a lot of noxious waste from the process. Tangney noticed many of those chemical byproducts were the same ones produced intentionally by oil refineries.
Any hydrocarbon fuel which didn’t come from dead dinosaurs that can also go in the tank without a fuss is something that makes everyone happy. Every drop that comes from whisky waste is a drop of crude oil saved.
The leftover goop finally has a useful purpose besides feed additive for animals. That’s a good thing because there wasn’t even much use for it that way. Most got dumped in the ocean until the professor came along.
Tagney started Celtic Renewables to turn “left-over waste from whisky-making into the kind of everyday chemicals that are normally made in oil refineries, without drilling for fossil fuels. This includes a novel gasoline alternative which is a direct replacement for the petrol that powers most traditional cars.”
The professor wants the gathered delegates to at least consider “how we do it, how we pay for it, how’s it going to happen. A roadmap. A strategy. Not an exercise in target setting.” He has a solid idea up and running in prototype.
Fill er up with ale
The way whisky is made involves barley, yeast and water. At the end of the process, distillers are left with “spent barley grains, known as draff, and a sugary water called pot ale.”
Glenfiddich uses theirs to produce “methane which is then used to power their specially adapted delivery trucks.” Professor Tagney goes even further. Their product is “a direct replacement fuel for a standard, unmodified, petrol engine.”
Starting with the draff and pot ale whisky byproducts, he converts them into “butanol, which is actually being used to power this car right now.” Tangney declared.
ABE fermentation, he explains, “produces acetone, butanol and ethanol, chemicals that are used daily in everything from fuel and food production to medicine and cosmetics.”
By starting with whisky waste products as raw materials it keeps the cost of manufacturing the finished fuel down to something manageable. The benefits are enormous for everyone involved.
“This is made from living carbon. Essentially it’s from a residue from an industry that’s one of the most important industries in the Scottish economy and we can take their residues and turn them into something we need.” By doing it, they save non-sustainable resources. His Grangemouth demonstration plant “can produce 1 million litres of advanced sustainable biochemicals from 50,000 tons of draff and pot ale and other raw materials such as potatoes, or almost any organic waste.”
