Distilling whisky results in waste products, namely pot ale left in the copper stills and spent grains. Scottish scientists have now developed a means to convert this waste matter into a useful biofuel:
Link via TigerHawk | Photo by Flickr user mnem used under Creative Commons license
It can be used in conventional cars without adapting their engines. The team also said it could be used to fuel planes and as the basis for chemicals such as acetone, an important solvent.
The new method developed by the team produces butanol, which gives 30% more power output than the traditional biofuel ethanol. It is based on a 100-year-old process that was originally developed to produce butanol and acetone by fermenting sugar. The team has adapted this to use whiskey by-products as a starting point and has filed for a patent to cover the new method. It plans to create a spin-out company to commercialise the invention.
Link via TigerHawk | Photo by Flickr user mnem used under Creative Commons license
Comments (4)
As soon as I'm off work, I'll head over to the store.
Whiskey, my friend, is there anything you can't do?
You dull pain, cure colds and now fuel vehicles too? :o)
Rhyme Me a Smile
Perhaps you mean "Since 1933".
- No $1 bills. Everything got rounded to the nearest $5, to cut down on all that clutter and time wasted counting ones.
- No Free Parking. That square became the Gas Company, so there were 3 utilities to own. Rent was calculated according to how many of the utilities you owned.
Then I made up a bunch of cards called Fate Cards, so I had 3 stacks - Chance, Community Chest, and Fate. 2 of the 6 designated Chance and CC squares were drafted into Fate squares, so there were 2 of each category. Some of those Fate cards were:
- Go to jail free (this is really helpful at the end, when you are safer sitting in jail than walking across other people's hotel minefields);
- Go the opposite direction around the board (this made it possible to hit the income tax BEFORE you hit GO);
- You may build 1 house now on a property, whether you hold the entire neighborhood or not;
- Title deed for Boardwalk and Mediterranean Ave immediately swap positions/ownership (since the rent on Med. Ave is rounded down to $0 anyway, this made it a valuable property to own, so one could pick up Boardwalk for really cheap).
- If you don't like the number you just rolled, you may play this card and re-roll 1 of your dice, but you must accept that second roll.
- Tornado (You may pick up any house on the board and set it down on any other buildable property);
- Mafia (Each player loses 1 property of their choice and the property can be bought by whoever lands on it. Houses remain on it.)