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Balmenach Distillery

Balmenach distillery is a traditional malt whisky distillery 1 mile from Cromdale in Speyside producing around 2.3 million litres of alcohol per annum. Balmenach’s energy requirements and co-product production data for 2010 are illustrated below:

Balmenach Energy Flow

Key Points:

  1. The distillery is not connected to the mains gas grid, and process steam is currently raised in a 6,400kW rated oil fired boiler.
  2. Steam demand for the boiler is dependent on the batch distillation process.
  3. The distillery has 3 wash stills and 3 spirit stills which in 2010 were run on a batch basis in either 6 day or 7 day shifts, with some expectation to move to 7 day shifts only in the future.
  4. Cooling of the distillation products is by traditional ‘worm tub’ condensers with cooling water leaving at around 50°C, limiting heat recovery potential.
  5. Electrical distribution is at 132kV.
  6. The distillery is situated inland with a burn nearby and around ten houses in the immediate vicinity of the distillery.
  7. Both solid and liquid co-products are currently converted to animal feed at the Rothes Dark Grains Plant.
  8. Due to the demolition of redundant maltings there is significant space available on-site for development.

Existing Energy Supply:

  1. Steam for stills is supplied by single 6,400kW Cochran oil fired boiler installed 2 years ago; a biomass boiler was preferred but not available at the time of purchase. Steam leaves boiler at 7 bar g and is throttled to 3 bar g before stills. Annual oil demand for 2010 was 1,646,320 litres, costing £782,002 at an average cost of 47.5p/l. Feed pre-heat is via heat recovery from the distillation products.
  2. Mains electricity supplies lighting, space heating, electric pumps and yeast refrigerators. Annual demand for 2010 was 479,091kWh at an average cost of 10.5p/kWh.

It is considered that there may be potential to produce useful amounts of heat, power, or both from the co-products of the distillery and the options available will be investigated in this study. Data and assumptions used are detailed in Appendix D.