Cheers! Your petrol tank could soon be smelling like a distillery

SCOTLAND’s whisky industry could become the source of eco-friendly biofuels for cars, with motorists powering their engines from the by-products of distilling.

The concept of turning the husks from the malted barley and other cereals used in the manufacture of whisky and other distilling and brewing processes into a source of fuel is being explored by researchers at Abertay University’s School of Contemporary Sciences.
They have been awarded a grant from the Carnegie Trust to investigate the feasibility of developing new methods to turn spent grain into bioethanol, a more environmentally-friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

The main advantages of bioethanol over traditional fuels are that it is neutral – it produces 65 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions – and it also burns at a higher temperature.

Professor Graeme Walker, who is leading the one-year study, said: “Scientists all over the world are trying to find a simple and cost-effective way to produce more biofuels from waste or low value products.

“The supply of fossil fuels is finite – some estimates suggest that around half of the world’s oil reserves have been used up in the last 200 years – and the race is on to find more environmentally-friendly alternatives.”

He explained: “At the moment, a lot of spent grain goes towards animal feed, but quite lot of this material up and down the country ends up being composted or going to landfill.

“We want to look at possible alternatives – using biotechnology to convert this material into biofuels. And the biofuel that we are interested in is fuel alcohol – bioethanol.”

Scotsman