New Fuel from Watermelon?

A client in the summer backyard barbecue and snacks, watermelon is also a promising new source of renewable energy.

According to a recent study, the rest of the watermelon from the garden "plants can grow to 9.4 million liters (2.5 million liters) of clean, renewable fuel ethanol per year for cars, trucks, gas tanks or aircraft conversion.

Agriculture, watermelon is a strange fruit - Each year, farmers across the country between 20 and 40 percent of their crops to rot in the ground. This is the ugly duck much, but on the inside, that defects or corrosion, not only selling melons in the supermarket.

Fly 'as a raven landed on the melon, it takes two to kiss on the skin, which is not good, "Wayne Fish of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Lane, Oklahoma, said." I have farmers tell me: "I've fifth bowler on the field. Is there anything I do? "

While the United States, he believes that 360,000 tons of water melons in these areas, the damage per year.

Some local farmers wonder if the waste is converted into a melon, clean fuel ethanol from sugar mills. Placed in a series of new experiences yesterday in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, the fish and the research team has shown they can.

Moreover, the juice of watermelon in the perfect way to industrial mass production of ethanol from corn, sugar cane molasses can be converted and optimized.

Watermelon juice is it will generate approximately 10 percent sugar by volume, about half of the merger, the consideration of the rights to ethanol producers. But it is from amino acids, which are a major source of nitrogen to feed the yeast during fermentation vol.

Clean, they calculated that the team could make about 2.5 million liters of ethanol per year from waste melon, down in the bucket of an industry that last year production of 9 billion liters of corn oil and other United States.

But corn and molasses requires lots of water, nitrogen, and sometimes added in preparation for fermentation. The team has shown that the juice of the watermelon melon water consumption decreased significantly reduce the supply of nitrogen is needed, and add sugar mixture, the amount of grain or molasses, 15 percent.

"There is no substitute for corn. In that sense it remains a niche source of biofuels," said Jim Rausch, president of College Station, Texas-based Common Sense Farm Business, LLC, which developed a prototype of watermelon juice - for processing ethanol plant.

"But not like algae biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol is now. No new technology should be developed so that it is profitable. "