An Edinburgh-based firm has been granted an £11 million investment from the Government to build a facility that can produce up to one million litres of biofuel per annum.
The facility is expected to become fully functional by December 2018 and will make biofuel using waste material from whisky fermentation.
More specifically, the waste that’ll be converted into biofuel will come from the barley kernels and pot ale - the yeasty liquid which remains after whisky distillation.
This process was actually first invented in Britain at the start of the last century, as a means to produce acetone for explosives used in World War One.
The new facility that will produce the whisky-based biofuel – called biobutanol - will be run by Celtic Renewables, a spin-out company from the Biofuel Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University. The firm produced it first samples of biobutanol from waste back in February earlier this year.
Leading the project is Professor Martin Tangney, who commented: “We are committed to developing a new industry right here in the UK that will be worth more than £100m-a-year and it starts here.
“Our next step is to open a demonstration facility and we are targeting a location in or near Grangemouth which is an area that's strategically right for us.”
Celtic Renewables joins other biofuel producers, including Nova Pangaea and Advanced Plasma Products, in an overall £25 million Government investment towards biofuels.
The UK Transport Minister Andrew Jones said: “Advanced biofuels have the potential to save at least 60% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the equivalent fossil fuel.”