Bioenergy & Waste News

Wednesday 18 February 2009

Scotland's oldest distillery, Glenturret has now become one of Britain's first carbon capture facilities

Scotland's oldest whisky distillery is taking part in a ground-breaking project to capture its carbon dioxide emissions and turn it into a biofuel using oil-producing algae, writes James Cartledge.

Home to Famous Grouse whisky, the Glenturret distillery in Crieff, Perthshire, is one of Scotland's top tourist attractions - producing whisky since 1775.

It is now the centre of a demonstration project that has just come to the end of its first phase turning boiler exhaust gas into oil that can be used as a biodiesel.

An added benefit of the process is that it cleans up the wastewater from the distillery process, with the algae consuming chemicals and copper residues generated by the fermentation stills.

Having shown that the process works, Scottish Bioenergy Ventures, the company behind the project, is now embarking on an expanded algae reactor system.

The so-called "phase two" of the demonstration project from this summer should see the system capable of producing about 6,000 litres of biofuel during the course of a year - capturing 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide in the process.

Success could lead to a third phase, with a "commercial-sized" algae reactor system that could prove too large for the Glenturret distillery, which is not only Scotland's oldest distillery but also one of its smallest.

Distillery owners the Edrington Group are keen for the project to be successful, since it is a solution to the difficult disposal of its copper-containing effluent.

Glenturret production manager Neil Cameron said: "We as a company have a strong commitment to protecting the environment and are always looking for new ways to minimise the impact of the distilling process. Scottish Bioenergy Venture's technology has shown real promise in doing this area and we have been pleased to assist in its ongoing development."

Chlorella

David Van Alstyne, founder and chief executive of Scottish Bioenergy Ventures, told New Energy Focus today that his patented process involved the algae Chlorella.

Flue gas from a boiler used to heat the whisky stills is percolated through the algae within wastewater from the fermentation process. The algae, which are contained within hundreds of glass "microreactors", die and fall to the bottom of the liquid, where they can be collected and separated into oil and a protein residue.

Mr Van Alstyne said that for every three kilogrammes of carbon dioxide that might be generated by using the biofuels produced by the process, the process itself consumed eight kilogrammes of carbon dioxide.

"Our process is carbon negative," he said. "The algae consume more carbon dioxide than you get burning the oil it produces."

The captured carbon is contained within the protein residue, which is mixed with spent grain and sold as fish food. With the distillery able to use the produced oil as a fuel, Mr Van Alstyne revealed that a local trucking firm has even signed on to carry out a 100,000 kilometre trial using the biodiesel in vehicles.

Mr Van Alstyne suggested other strains of algae could prove to be better at producing oil than Chlorella, but explained that this particular strain of algae had been chosen because of its ability to make use of the copper-containing effluent from the distillery.

Scottish Bioenergy Ventures

Based in St Cyrus, just north of Montrose in Aberdeenshire, Scottish Bioenergy Ventures was set up in 2007 by Mr Van Alstyne, who is originally from the United States but has lived in Scotland for the last decade.

The entrepeneur's interest in oil-producing algae stems from his work with the University of California at Davis, he said.

If all goes well with the extended algae reactor system of the Glenturret project's phase two, "phase three" could lead to a plant capable of producing between 1.2 and 1.5 tonnes of biofuel a day, the Scottish Bioenergy Ventures chief executive said.

Design work could get underway on such a system towards the end of 2009.

Should it be decided that the Glenturret distillery could not house such a system, Mr Van Alstyne suggested it could be set up at another of the Edrington Group's distilleries.