Space Daily September 14, 2026 • 04:24

Bacteria at a plant in Grangemouth eat the leftovers of Scotland's whisky industry — almost 750,000 tons of spent barley and two billion liters of pot ale a year — and excrete acetone, ethanol and butanol, with the butanol close enough to gasoline to burn in an - Space Daily

Bacteria at a plant in Grangemouth eat the leftovers of Scotland's whisky industry — almost 750,000 tons of spent barley and two billion liters of pot ale a year — and excrete acetone, ethanol and butanol, with the butanol close enough to gasoline to burn in an - Space Daily

Scotland's whisky makers have accidentally created a renewable fuel source—if they can figure out what to do with billions of liters of industrial waste.

Every liter of Scotch whisky leaves a mess behind it. For each liter of the spirit, a distillery produces roughly two and a half kilograms of spent barley grains called draff and about eight liters o… [+4823 chars]

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