Scotch distiller Glenfiddich powers its trucks with whisky waste
Specifically, it uses a biogas obtained from the anaerobic digestion of liquid byproducts of the distilling process, but the alliteration sounded better.
This is where (part of) the magic happens.
Sure, having a brewery or distillery is probably pretty cool, but in addition to producing an endless river of hooch, you also produce tons and tons of waste.
Many alcohol manufacturers sell the spent grains left over from the malting process to be used as food for livestock, but Scottish distillery Glenfiddich figures it may have a new answer to an old problem, according to a report Tuesday by Reuters.
That answer is biogas. No, not the kind that seeps out of your dad in the car around a half-hour after he pounds a Costco hotdog with all the fixings -- well, actually, it is kind of like that -- but the type produced by anaerobic digestion of the leftover liquid waste from the distillation process. Glenfiddich has already converted four Iveco trucks to run on the stuff, and it plans to go a lot further than that.
The four biogas-powered trucks were initially designed to run on liquid petroleum gas and have been converted to use the biogas collected at the main distillery. These trucks are then used to transport that sweet Scotch whisky to the company's bottling and packaging plants elsewhere in Scotland.
Glenfiddich estimates that these trucks produce approximately 95% less carbon than if they were run on petroleum products. That's a pretty significant drop, and the cost savings of using a byproduct rather than conventional fuels for the company's fleet of around 20 trucks is likely pretty attractive as well.
