Cask and Still Magazine | 53
I
t wasn’t until he was standing, revealing his work to the world, that it really dawned on Professor
Martin Tangney what he had actually done. After developing the process at industrial scale in Belgium over the last year, his Edinburgh-based company Celtic Renewables, a spin-out company from the Biofuel Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University, had become the first in the world to produce a biofuel capable of powering cars from the by-products of whisky fermentation. ‘It suddenly hit me that nobody had ever done this before,’ he says. ‘I was holding this little bottle of bio-butanol and I thought, this could go in a museum one day!’ The biofuel is made from the sugar-
rich kernels of barley, which are soaked in water to facilitate the fermentation process, and pot ale, the copper- containing yeasty liquid that is left over following distillation. It is produced using a process that was first developed in the UK a century ago, but died out in competition with the petrochemical industry. Bio-butanol is now recognised as a direct replacement for petrol, and the company is seeking to reintroduce
We needed a substitute that was low cost and sustainable
the process to Europe for the first time since the 1960s, using the millions of tonnes of annual whisky production residues as the raw material. Prof Tangney has been researching
the process for years, but his work suddenly became relevant in 2005 when
We meet the boffin determined to have us all running round in cars powered by whisky waste
Written by Kirsty Smyth
David Ramey drove around America in a car powered entirely by butanol. ‘Most biofuel is made from
fermenting specially-grown food crops, which is obviously expensive. We needed a substitute that was low cost and sustainable. The whisky industry is one of the most important globally, producing a premium-quality product that has worldwide brand recognition, and it’s not going to disappear,’ Prof Tangney explains. ‘Whisky residue was an ideal solution because the waste is low value but problematic to dispose of. Our process provides a viable 24/7
alternative for getting rid of waste, so it’s a perfect partner to the industry and it has the potential to expand as far as the whisky industry has.’ Celtic Renewables is now seeking funding to build a demonstration facility at the Grangemouth petrochemical plant. Company owners estimate it could be the market leader in an industry worth more than £100million to the UK economy. ‘I love the idea of people driving round Scotland with a component of their fuel made from waste from the biggest industry here,’ says Prof Tangney.
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