Patrick Heist: My name's Patrick Heist, and we are at Ferm Solutions and Wilderness Trail
Distillery here in Danville, Kentucky.
Since graduating from the University of Kentucky, multiple times. My last time I graduated was
2003, with a PhD in Plant Pathology, from the College of Agriculture. Not long after
that, I got into this industry as a consultant, and then not long after that, my business
partner and I, he's also a University of Kentucky graduate from Engineering, we put together
this company Ferm Solutions, that markets products to fuel and beverage alcohol facilities,
as well as offers technical support and consultation for troubleshooting at distilleries all over the world.
We currently work with about 500 plus distilleries, both large and small.
We do a lot of training for distilleries, and that's one of the reasons why we started Wilderness
Trail Distillery, that process has been going on for about 3 years now. So, in
terms of our bourbon production, we're about a year to two years away from releasing our
first Kentucky-straight bourbon.
Bourbon stillage is a by-product from the bourbon production process. The left over
water, the left over grains, which doesn't have a lot of sugar, but has a lot of fiber,
and other oils, and proteins. We actually have one farmer here in Danville that takes
all of our stillage, and feeds it to his cattle. Most farmers, and other people that are interested
in the nutritional qualities of that stillage, are interested in the solid portion of it.
They are actually interested in using the liquid portion of the stillage. They being
the Center for Applied Energy Research at the University of Kentucky.
Steve Lipka: My name is Steve Lipka. I'm an associate director at the Center for Applied
Energy Research at the University of Kentucky.
I'm a materials engineer, materials scientist, and I use electro-chemistry as a tool to make
useful devices. We're always looking for precursor materials that are abundant, sustainable,
and waste products that can be converted into value-added products that, in our case, can
be used to store electro-chemical energy.
Narrator: Steve Lipka has been working on bourbon stillage for a year, and not long
after he started this research he partnered with Wilderness Trail Distillery.
So how do you take liquid stillage and end up with batteries? Lipka’s lab uses hydrothermal
carbonization, a process that takes water and a carbon source—like stillage—heats
it up under pressure, and ends up with solid material that is made up of tiny,
uniformly sized particles.
Steve Lipka: Using this hydrothermal carbonization, you can tailor the materials. You can tailor
their composition, their bulk and surface composition, you can tailor their density,
their electrical conductivity, and their size. And, also, most importantly, their phase
purity. Having carbons that have high purity are very, very important in a lot of electro-chemical
storage applications.
We take these materials, which we refer to as green material, and we then do additional
post-processing, typically thermal processes to convert it into useful materials that can
be used for batteries.
We've made cathodes, or positive electrode materials for primary carbon-monofluoride
batteries, which are the most energy-dense primary batteries in the world.
and they make very, very good materials.
Narrator: Lipka started this work on next-generation light-weight, energy-dense power sources with
funding from the Office of Naval Research.
Steve Lipka: We’ve also used these as carbons that can be used in secondary batteries, like
lithium-ion. The benefits of lithium ion batteries are that they are very energy dense systems.
Narrator: Lithium-ion batteries are expensive when compared to other battery systems. Using
a waste product like stillage could bring down production costs and reduce the reliance
on other, more expensive sources of carbon.
Lipka’s team is making electrochemical capacitors from stillage. Capacitors excel at rapid charge
and discharge. This makes them ideal for capturing energy from alternative sources like solar
or wind, then providing a quick burst of power when the electric grid has a momentary outage.
Lipka is also using bourbon stillage to create cheaper activated carbons
for water filtration with funds from General Electric Appliances in Louisville.
Steve Lipka: When we started working with our project with General Electric, we took
first the bourbon stillage, and converted that to these carbon-rich materials, and we
then use a process called activation exposes the material to a steam environment. And we
create a high porosity, high surface-area materials. Then, those materials are used
to see how well they can reduce chloramine, a disinfectant used in municipal drinking
water supplies or remove chloroform.
The immediate use is on the consumer end. If you have a refrigerator, that has a water
supply that makes ice, for example, or dispenses water, there's an activated carbon filter
in every one of those refrigerators.
The Center for Applied Energy Research has a rich history of supporting research activities
that are critical and germane to the Commonwealth of Kentucky and I think it's of great value for us to
look at industries here in Kentucky that can use those products in a very useful way and
have a sustainable type of business.
I think the most exciting thing for me, and for most people, is that you can take a product
that is considered waste in many industries, and re-purpose it, or convert it into value-added
product that has tremendous utility.
I would like to get some of the distilleries interested in this and see this have some
traction at the end of the day, and turn it into a business. I think it can be done. And
again, it would be another wonderful Kentucky story.