Project Objective

The aim of this project was to provide a technical and economic evaluation of the different methods available for energy production from distillery co-product and determine the best available options.

Project Scope

The investigation shall focus on small scale malt whisky distilleries producing less than 5 million litres of alcohol per annum, examining the potential for reduction in mains electricity and fuel or gas consumption.

No changes to the distillery process were investigated; this was treated as a black box other than heat & electricity requirements and co-product production, as changes to the distillery process could impact the quality of the product.

Examine economic effects on mains electricity & fuel bills, and also government incentive schemes such as FITs, ROCs, RHI.

Project Deliverables

We intend to produce a spreadsheet-based tool that can be used by distilleries to assess the benefits of using their co-products to generate energy. This will take information on production rates and energy requirements and, for various choices of system configuration, output capital cost, energy savings, subsidy income and payback period.

We will also produce a case study of Inver House Distiller's Balmenach distillery. This is a highly traditional malt distillery with an annual production of 2 million litres of whisky. As well as providing useful information for Inver House, this case-study will assist in the development of the tool.

We have also collected data on the malt whisky distilleries in Scotland and produced a database categorising them in order to identify those distilleries which may be suited to district heating or other integration with nearby energy users.