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Introduction to the Energy from Whisky Co-products tool

A key outcome of this project is a spreadsheet-based tool, designed to assist malt distillery operators examine the potential costs and benefits of generating energy through anaerobic digestion of their liquid co-products. This tool is intended to give an indication of the financial viability of generating energy from whisky co-products, but should not be used in place of a detailed feasibility study.

The key input required by the tool is the amount of liquid co-products produced annually by a distillery. From this, the tool calculates the volume of biogas which could be produced by anaerobic digestion. It then calculates the capital costs, annual benefits and payback periods associated with four different options for using the biogas. It also enables the sensitivity of these results to changes in biogas production rates, energy costs and other factors to be explored.

The four generation options evaluated by the tool have been selected as they are likely to provide the largest benefits. They are:

Structure of Tool

The tool spreadsheet contains seven pages. Key inputs and results are set out in the first two pages. The remaining five pages contain calculations based on default values. The default values on each page can be adjusted by the user to improve the accuracy of the results. The tool is initially setup with default values on the Primary Input page for an average malt distillery with an annual production volume of 2,300,000 litres.

Spreadsheet pages:

  1. Primary Input
  2. Results
  3. Biogas Production
  4. Biogas Boiler
  5. Electricity Generation
  6. CHP
  7. Climate Data