By Rod Walton, EnergyTech Senior Editor
It’s potentially a perfect sunshine and whiskey combination as several companies will collaborate to decarbonize a Scottish whiskey distillery.
Hyrdogen Technologies will work with UK-based green H2 firm Protium and Bruichladdich distillery. The project will incorporate the closed-loop hydrogen boiler technology from HT, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jericho Energy Ventures.
The project teams will move forward with a $3.5 million award from the UK Government’s Green Distilleries Competition.
The pilot project – dubbed HyLaddie – will be led by Protium, utilizing Jericho’s Dynamic Combustion Chamber (DCC) boiler solution. The boiler will heat the stills used to create Bruichladdich’s globally marketed Scotch and artisanal gin brands.
“Leveraging Jericho’s DCC™ technology will have an enormous impact on the success of HyLaddie – a project we are extremely excited about as it can totally transform our approach to sustainability,” Douglas Taylor, CEO of Bruichladdich Distillery, said in a statement. “Many distilleries across Scotland are making serious steps forward in decarbonizing their energy requirements, and we believe that hydrogen has a future in the Scotch industry.”
This project marks the first global deployment of the DCC following an in-depth feasibility study in early 2021 by Bruichladdich and Protium.
With 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions stemming from low, medium, and high-grade heat applications, the decarbonization of thermal operations plays a vital role in achieving global net-zero targets, acording to the project partners. Green hydrogen solutions enable hard-to-abate sectors, such as the food and beverage manufacturing industry, to reduce their environmental impact.
(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can reached at [email protected]).