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| Photo: Colin Smith. Wikimedia Commons |
The production process involves combining soaked barley grains with "a yellow, beer-like liquid called pot ale" and mixing in an anaerobic digester to produce low-carbon biogas. The resultant gas is essentially methane, which is stored at a location where specially adapted trucks can refuel.
The distillery's biogas now powers the distillery's converted trucks that are used to transport the distillery's whiskey and other products. You might even say that the full-circle use of whiskey for energy makes for a good marketing story, powering sales for the distillery as well. In short, it's a renewable energy story that is ultra-low carbon.
A spokesperson for the distillery said that each truck using the new biofuel saves around 250 tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere.
Evidently the concept of creating a biofuel from spent grains and liquid from stills had been announced in 2010 by researches at Edinburgh Napier University. Environmentalists hailed the idea, and now Glenfiddich Distillery has followed through on the concept.
Another benefit of the technique is that alternative means of generating biofuels can cause damage to forests and wildlife habitats. The Glenfiddich success has many people believing that whiskey-powered cars would be quite feasible in Scotland's future, significantly reducing CO2 in Scotland's future.
At this moment in time only three of the distillery's trucks have been converted. Their aim is to convert all twenty of their trucks and then do a roll-out to the rest of the industry.
Glenfiddich's distillery director Stuart Watts notes that the lifecycle cost of buying and maintaining trucks running on biofuel is similar to straight diesel. The benefits are environmental. “This makes a compelling choice for companies such as ourselves to use the biogas truck rather than the traditional diesel truck," he said.
Whatever will they cook up next?
Looking West, across the Pacific, here's an answer to that question. The president of a transport firm in Southwestern Japan is now powering his trucks with biofuel partly made with ramen soup broth. The company, Nishida Shoun, mixes waste cooking oil with lard extracted from the broth. For what it's worth, the broth is made from pork bones.
The company is already using the biodiesel in some of its trucks and will have all 170 vehicles in its fleet converted by September.
Both these stories are a good read. Maybe one of them will give you ideas on how to recycle your own waste bi-products while making the world a cleaner, safer place.
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Drink and drive: Glenfiddich uses whiskey waste to power its trucks
In modern usage, whisky is from Scotland and whiskey is from Ireland. The difference comes from the translation of words from the Scottish and Irish Gaelic forms. ... Although the legal spelling is whisky, whiskey is generally preferred. Some distilleries do like to use the 'Scottish' version – see Maker's Mark.
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