Edinburgh Napier University

  The worldwide success of the Whisky Industry provides a considerable supply of biomass-derived waste streams for future use. Sustainable valorisation of these streams will drive additional economic growth in this sector. This project focuses on one of the waste streams known as draff or spent grains. We will deliver an
optimised process for pretreating draff. The selected pretreatment protocol will deliver sugar-dominated product streams that are suitable for fermentation, leading to the production of the solvents acetone, butanol and ethanol. A key benefit of the selected approach is that the solvents produced in the fermentation process will be
used in the pretreatment process, completing a circular economy process that will have a number of economic and environmental benefits. For example, the need to transport solvents to a processing plant will no longer be required. The project will build on expertise and a preliminary study carried out by researchers at Celtic
Renewables LTD (CRL), the Biofuel Research Centre, Edinburgh Napier University and the University of St Andrews.