After space whisky, here’s the booze-powered car: Government invests £11m in Celtic Renewables
Say what you like about whisky, but it's definitely going places. After yesterday's revelation that when matured in space, the spirit produces a "dramatically different flavour profile", it has now been revealed that the government has awarded cash to a company trying to produce whisky-powered fuel.
Celtic Renewables, a spin-out from Edinburgh Napier University's Biofuel Research Centre, said it had been awarded £11m to build the "world's first plant dedicated to the production of advanced biofuel from the residues of the whisky industry".
The company said it expects its new facility to be operational by December 2018, producing at least one million litres of biofuel capable of powering cars each year. Although we will remind readers that in most circumstances, whisky and driving don't tend to combine…
The process to convert whisky by-products into fuel has been around since the First World War, but was "phased out in the 1960s due to competition from the petrochemical industry", the company said.
"Our aim is to reintroduce that process but in a modern context," Professor Martin Tangney, the company's founder, added.
"We are committed to developing a new industry… worth more than £100m a year."
Celtic Renewables is one of three biofuel producers awarded £25m by transport minister Andrew Jones yesterday.