Every morning in Grangemouth, chemists at Celtic Renewables’s small factory feed a vial of microbes with a precisely tailored cocktail of food – liquid residues from the scotch whisky industry.
In vessels surrounded by a web of metal pipes and gleaming stainless steel valves, the microbes multiply into something other than drink: a starter solution for batches of acetone, butanol and ethanol – chemicals essential for countless everyday products.
