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Start your engines with watermelon juice Jeremy Hance mongabay.com August 25, 2009
"About 20% of each annual watermelon crop is left in the field because of surface blemishes or because they are misshapen. We've shown that the juice of these melons is a source of readily fermentable sugars, representing a heretofore untapped feedstock for ethanol biofuel production," explains lead author Wayne Fish with the USDA-Agricultural Research Service's South Central Agricultural Research Laboratory. Fish also says that watermelon juice is a source of lycopene and L-citrulline, two 'nutraeuticals' (a word-combination of nutrition and pharmaceuticals) that are in high demand in the health-foods' market. After these compounds are removed to be sold, the juice can still be fermented into ethanol. Citation: Wayne W Fish, Benny D Bruton and Vincent M Russo . Watermelon juice: a promising feedstock supplement, diluent, and nitrogen supplement for ethanol biofuel production. Biotechnology for Biofuels. August, 25, 2009. Related articles Biofuel company eyes dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico for creating fish-powered fuel (08/18/2009) 'Dead zones' in the ocean are called such for a reason. Every year agricultural run-off, especially fertilizer, floods the oceans with an abundance of nutrients leading to algae blooms, i.e. massive explosions of phytoplankton. The demise of these blooms, and the rise of bacteria feeding on them, eventually starves the entire area of oxygen creating a 'dead zone' where the vast majority marine life can't survive. Considered by most to be an environmental catastrophe, a new company is looking at dead zones in a different light: fuel and profit. Beer waste to be used for home biofuel production (07/16/2009) Southern California residents will soon be able to produce their own ethanol fuel from beer residue. Algae could yield 30 times more biofuel than soybeans, while cleaning the environment (08/15/2008) Algae could be used as a biofuel while simultaneously cleaning up the environment, report researchers at the University of Virginia.
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