Tullibardine, Celtic Renewables team up on whisky residues-to-fuel project

Sep 27, 2012 - Scottish malt whisky producer Tullibardine said yesterday it had agreed to supply draff and pot ale, by-products of whisky making, to domestic firm Celtic Renewables Ltd for a demonstration biobutanol production facility.

Celtic Renewables' ambition is to construct a processing facility in Scotland which would lay the foundations of a GBP-60-million (USD 97m/EUR 76m) industry.

Under a memorandum of understanding the distillery is now supplying raw materials to help Celtic advance its conversion process. The biofuel technology firm is a spin-out company from the Biofuel Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University. The latter has already conducted "proof-of-concept" research using three litres (0.79 gallons) of pot ale. With the help of Tullibardine it will now scale up to 10,000 litres.

The pilot demonstration project has secured a grant of GBP 155,000 from Zero Waste Scotland.

At present Tullibardine generates 6,500 tonnes of draff and 2 million litres of pot ale. The cost of disposing these by-products each year is around GBP 250,000 according to Tullibardine managing director Douglas Ross.

(GBP 1 = USD 1.619/EUR 1.259)

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