Turn orange peel into fuel and antimicrobial agent

While studying waste recycling processes, Swedish researchers have come up with a new way to create alternative fuel sources from special materials such as orange peels.

Mohammad Taherzadeh and his team at the Department of Engineering, University of Boras, Sweden, have been successful in producing ethanol and biogas from many different wastes and are now focusing on research on waste from citrus.

In the past, discarded citrus fruits were often removed from the fertilizer production process because they contained an antimicrobial agent that slowed down decay.

The team found that their acidic crust is more effective than we thought. Scientists have developed a method to produce four products from citrus waste, including: Limon - an antibacterial agent, Pectin - a glue agent used for jam and jelly, Biogas - natural gas Can compress, run engine and Ethanol - a fuel that has a long history.

Daniel Yar Hamidi, Inicia's executive director and Professor Mohammad Taherzadeh, the research director.An application for a patent for the above process has been submitted to the Swedish Patent Office.

Both Mohammad Taherzadeh and Daniel Yar Hamidi believe that the process of converting citrus waste into these products will be successful, especially in countries with a warm climate and growing citrus.

Taherzadeh said: "Such places will have a high demand for such equipment. At Boras, we have 10,000 tons of citrus waste every year. We need to try harder. If it goes in the right direction We can both sell our knowledge and improve the global environment. "

FPL Energy's Ethanol factory in Florida, the United States also developed a plan to build a plant that converts wastes from oranges and grapefruit into ethanol with a yield of 15 million liters of ethanol a year.