New Approach To Biofuel Brings It Back Into Focus

Thursday, 9. September 2010

If you are driving behind a car and it seems to be wandering across the road as though the driver had been drinking, it may not be the driver it may just be the car that’s a little worse for wear! Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a biofuel from whisky by-products. Called biobutanol it’s 30% more powerful than ethanol and is created out of two waste products: ‘pot ale’ from copper stills and ‘draff’ from grains. Each year the whisky industry produces 1,600 million litres of ‘pot ale’ and 187 tonnes of draff which currently goes to waste. The amazing discovery is that unlike ethanol, biobutanol can be used in standard petrol engines, either in place of petrol or blended with it. It gives a whole new dimension to siphoning fuel from the petrol tank. Have you used bio-fuel? Is this the way forward? By Graham Hill