In Scotland, Celtic Renewables has become the first company in the world to produce biofuel from whisky residues. The Edinburgh-based spin-out from the Biofuel Research Center (BfRC) at Edinburgh Napier University now plans to build a production facility in central Scotland after manufacturing the first samples of bio-butanol from the by-products of whisky fermentation.
It is now seeking funding from the Department for Transport’s (DfT’s) £25 million advanced biofuel demonstration competition and, if successful, hopes to build its first demonstration facility at the Grangemouth petrochemical plant by 2018. Company owners estimate it could be the market leader in an industry worth more than £100million to the UK economy.
Celtic Renewables, in partnership with the Ghent-based BioBase Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP), produced the first samples of bio-butanol from waste using a process called the Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation earlier this month. The ABE fermentation was first developed in the UK a century ago, but died out in competition with the petrochemical industry. However bio-butanol is now recognised as an advanced biofuel – a direct replacement for petrol – and the Scottish company is seeking to reintroduce the process to Europe for the first time since the 1960s, using the millions of tonnes of annual whisky production residues as their unique raw material.
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