Hydrothermal carbonization can directly convert sloppy stillage into hard or activated carbon.
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How chemists turned bourbon waste into supercapacitors
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Is there anything particular about getting carbon this way to any other way, besides that it's a waste product?
Vaguely related, drying food produce is energy intensive and expensive, and something really suited to building a large amount of excess solar. Sell solar to the market when prices suit that, but having dryers ready to turn on when market prices drop due to too much solar would help boost the value of crops and leftover products like this. Win win!
Vaguely related, drying food produce is energy intensive and expensive, and something really suited to building a large amount of excess solar. Sell solar to the market when prices suit that, but having dryers ready to turn on when market prices drop due to too much solar would help boost the value of crops and leftover products like this. Win win!
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Ninja'd by SnakePlisskenUK, but yeah - I'm happy to help ensure a steady supply of raw materials for this work.
Very, very happy.
Good work all round, folks!
Very, very happy.
Good work all round, folks!
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Is there a reason (in this use case) they don't just sun dry the stillage? Seems a perfect use of solar energy to make it virtually free, which would greatly reduce the weight to transport and energy needing to input to the process reducing the cost of the entire process? I'm assuming you don't care too much about if a little bit of spoilage occurs while it sits out since you're carbonizing the material, so bacteria would just carbonize along like the ones in there already along with the yeast do?
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Or maybe it's 25 times more but for a very short time.
Or maybe 25 times more, but for a limited number of cycles, decreasing rapidly and almost logarithmically with each cycle.
I can entirely believe 25 times more, because there are other aspects that they're not mentioning. And those aspects are almost certainly where the problems lie...
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Given that the US bourbon industry is really hurting currently thanks to tariffs and changing drinking habits, this could be one way to boost it if scaling up is economically viable. And if not, well, they proved that something like stillage should be looked at for other uses other than tossing it. Science!
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Solar drying isn't free, commercial salt producers often use vacuum evaporation because it's cheaper overall than maintaining a bunch of solar ponds. Solar evap uses less external energy but whether you save any money depends on a lot of other factors.
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I'm also skeptical about that number. Carbon electrodes aren't revolutionary, but maybe something in the production process vastly increases the available surface area, or makes the size of the nanopores match the size of the lithium electrolyte ions. Or maybe there are trace elements left over from the mash that help. The lack of detail is frustrating.
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Close. To be labeled bourbon, the whiskey must be made in the US and be at least 51% corn whiskey, but federal law (the same section) further states that any whiskey with 80% or higher corn whiskey must be labeled as "Corn Whiskey". Foreign made products can be sold as "Corn Whiskey" as well, and cannot be sold as "Bourbon". So all bourbons sold in the US are made in the US and have between 51% and 80% corn whiskey.
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To my department head: "My lab need to cultivate good relationships with distillery owners. Thank you for considering my request for travel funds. We request full per diem..."
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I really hate to be "this guy", but since you started with "Legally"... it also needs to be distilled in the United States. It's just like the more famous Champagne situation.
Oh, and no state's name but Kentucky's is allowed to be advertised on the label, which is an additional twist to respect the birthplace of Bourbon Whiskey.
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I don't want to name brands, but the first batch I bought was beyond good. It was outstanding. I gifted some to a friend, and remember telling them: "don't even taste it right now. Just unscrew the cap and get a whiff of the aroma."
Unfortunately, the same vendor later put out inferior product, I think they re-used the same barrels.
I note you can also get maple-flavored bourbon, so it seems to be an excellent pairing both ways.
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It seems to me that even if all the carbon came from this method it won't make a dent on the amount of stillage produced.
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My guess is that you'd need a lot of room to dry out the stillage en masse, particularly at scale. And the drying times would be dependent on the weather; more time on cloudy days, less on hot summer days.
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This is incorrect.
https://www.ttb.gov/system/files/images/pdfs/spirits_bam/chapter4.pdf
There are a few parts to this, I will name them in order:
(1) Produced (distilled and aged) in the US
(2) Cannot be distilled above 160 proof
(3) Mash must be at least 51% corn - note the rest of the mash may be any grain, though it is usually some combination of malted barley, rye, wheat, or all (“4 grain”), you can use quirky grains like oatmeal
(4) Must be aged, more on that later
(5) Barrel entry proof may not exceed 125 proof
(6) Must be aged in new charred oak containers - note that it could be aged in large cubes, or pipes, but in practice this is always barrels of various sizes.
Regarding age:
(A) to be called “straight bourbon whiskey” it must be aged at least 2 years and all the whiskey must come from one state
(B) if it aged less than four years, it must contain an age statement, for example, if you only age two years, you have to write that on the bottle. In practice this means most bourbon is aged four years. If you age it longer, people tend to write that on the bottle as well
(C) any age statement must be the minimum aged bourbon in the blend, if you mix 5 year old bourbon with 7 year old bourbon and bottle it you may only label it 5 years old
(D) all aging must occur in new charred oak containers. You do not get credit for any “finishing” in other casks, such as a sherry cask finish or a toasted oak container. If you put the bourbon in another container it must be labeled as “bourbon finished in X”
What is corn whiskey? Well
I have bolded the relevant part. In practice it is used casks. New charred oak must be used for bourbon. Corn whiskey is aged in casks that someone else used already, in practice.
So, for example, Mellow Corn, the most popular “corn whiskey” is aged in used casks that heaven hill already used for bourbon. Otherwise they would have to sell those casks or throw them away.
There are many bourbons which are above 80% corn. Jimmy Red corn is the first which comes to mind as maybe entirely 90+% corn. Balcones makes some as well, baby blue / true blue I think is 100% corn (but it is quite bad In my opinion).
Jack Daniel’s Old no. 7 I believe is exactly 80% corn.
(Rye whiskey, just as an aside, only needs to be 51% rye. So you could have a “rye” which is 51% rye and 44% corn, with 5% malted barley, and a “bourbon” which is 51% corn, 44% rye, and 5% malted barley, and they would really taste almost identical except to the most trained palate. Barely-legal Rye and High-rye Bourbon are very similar, and people often have strange ideas about how how they do not like rye, while they drink high rye bourbon. While there are a lot of 95/5 rye products, mostly because MGP sells it in bulk, there are also a lot of barely legal ryes, because corn is sweet and many consumers like sweet whisky)
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“Legally, a whiskey can only be sold as bourbon if its mash is composed of at least 51 percent corn, with any other cereal grain (usually rye and barley) making up the remainder.”
For the curious, for the 3 bourbons in the header image:
Buffalo Trace - 89.5% corn, 7% rye, and 3.5% barley
Makers Mark - 70% corn, 16% wheat, and 14% barley
Woodford Reserve - 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% barley
My personal preference, Bulleit Barrel Strength, is 68% corn, 28% rye, and 4% barley.
For the curious, for the 3 bourbons in the header image:
Buffalo Trace - 89.5% corn, 7% rye, and 3.5% barley
Makers Mark - 70% corn, 16% wheat, and 14% barley
Woodford Reserve - 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% barley
My personal preference, Bulleit Barrel Strength, is 68% corn, 28% rye, and 4% barley.
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This is also not true, and is a common myth. Bourbon can be made in any state in the US.
In fact, if the bourbon is labeled “Straight bourbon” the state where it is distilled is required to be listed on the label. There’s Texas bourbon (still Austin is great), Missouri Bourbon (Ben Holladay is great), California bourbon (redwood empire is great), Utah bourbon, etc. It’s made all over the US.
A lot of bourbon is distilled in Indiana by Midwest Grain Products (MGP). Look at a label of a bourbon, often on the back, and you’ll see “distilled in Indiana.” MGP makes great stuff, but they also make cheap stuff. They’re kind of like the Sysco of bourbon. A lot of small producers are actually “NDPs” non-distilling producers, and they buy their distillate from MGP.
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I once had the pleasure of tasting some different Texan bourbons many years ago. Wow, I was impressed at how good they are! Good American spirits are harder to find on this (far) side of the Atlantic.
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Many bourbon barrels are shipped to Scotland where they are used to store/age Scotch. Its a weird relationship. Bourbon makers use new barrels and Scotch makers use used bourbon barrels.
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I should have been clearer in my wording. You can make Bourbon in Indiana, but you can only label that as "Bourbon", not as "Kentucky Bourbon". You can indicate that it was distilled in Indiana, because that is true, but you cannot label it as "Kentucky Bourbon" because you didn't make it in Kentucky. I don't think you'd even be allowed to label it as "Indiana Bourbon" (not that you'd want to), but I'm not lawyer.
If it's from Kentucky, you can call it Kentucky Bourbon or Kentucky Straight Bourbon (if it's aged properly) because that geographical distinction matters to some people. Kentucky Bourbon on the label isn't to denote style or flavor, it's an indicator that the product came from the birthplace of Bourbon.
EDIT: Also, if I'm wrong about this, please show me a label. I am far from an expert on Bourbons from outside the region.
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"... store as much as 48 watts per kilogram"
I don't understand how one can Stora watts (a unit of power and not of erney). WOuld it be Joules or many watt.hours ?
I don't understand how one can Stora watts (a unit of power and not of erney). WOuld it be Joules or many watt.hours ?
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This. Though, I am not sure just how much drying it really needs. It does add to the weight and cost to transport, but air and drip drying should remove a large portion of the moisture. I guess they might have to deal with spoilage though, so it might need to be fully dried for feedstock.
When I had chickens, they friggen LOVED the spent grains from my mash when I was homebrewing. A good way to offset feed costs for the chickens. Then again, my transportation was 150ft away and the wet grains didn't go bad over the course of a day or so (dump them half once it had cooled, dump the other half into the run the next day).
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Gotta keep the animals just a wee bit sloppy or they start getting ideas, donchaknow. All animals are created equal, but not all animals process alcohol at the same metabolic rate!
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So Homer Simpson was right again:
Alcohol is the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!
Alcohol is the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!
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This really needs to be addressed. It seems to be a glaring error, and I suspect they meant Wh/Kg as that would be an improvement over most supercaps (according to Gemini). However 48 W/Kg (which is a power density) would be kind of pathetic for a supercap (also according to Gemini).
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I'll drink to this!
It still sounds like an early stage proof of concept that will need more work but I'll drink to it!
It still sounds like an early stage proof of concept that will need more work but I'll drink to it!
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This was pretty trivial to find via image search.
I expect anyone from Indiana, who is proud of their state and product, would want to label it as Indiana Bourbon.
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