Next Up in Ethanol Innovation: Orange Peels
by Eliza Barclay, Washington, D.C. 
on 10. 6.07
The price of ethanol is plummeting and corn-based ethanol skeptics are gaining increasing traction in casting a dark shadow over its potential. But the biofuel revolution continues to spur innovation and researchers around the world are uncovering alternatives to corn and sugarcane from which to produce ethanol. In Mexico, the newest discovery is ethanol derived from orange peel, which a group of students from the University of Guadalajara's science and engineering division happened upon while researching essential oils.
The study was presented at the 42nd annual Mexican Chemistry Congress this week and demonstrated the possibility of using the fermented sugars from orange peel to produce ethanol. According to the students, orange peel adds oxygen to fuel, which helps to neutralize the carbon monoxide emissions. So far it's unclear whether orange-based ethanol would drive up the price of the world's favorite citrus fruit, but at the least the Mexican government is likely to fund more research to find out. ::Via Reforma (Spanish link and subscription required)
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Orange peel ethanol is not an entirely new concept. A friend of mine who works for Bank of America reviewed a proposal for a $750 million dollar orange-peel to ethanol facility in Tampa, FL back in 2005 (you can find news articles about it through google.
It was ultimately shut down because the tech was not "proven". As I recall, the citrus peel are largely a waste product which have to be taken to a landfill. Turning them into ethanol would probably REDUCE the cost of oranges.
I'm not a fan of corn-ethanol, but I'll support anything that turns waste into ethanol. In the short term, getting America onto E10 would be a huge step forward. The net impact on oil consumption would probably be about 15% and a larger reduction in net GHG emissions. Ethanol as an additive helps fuel burn more efficiently (by increasing flame front speed) and more completely. Having a national fuel standard would allow car manufacturers to increase compression ratios and tighten up timings (costs them nothing) which would lead to improved fuel economy and reliability.
Its a win-win for everyone (as long as you don't friggin use fertilized corn).
Caramba!! - There goes my marmalade jam.
Don't orange peels already contain a significant amount of orange oil, which is pretty combustible as it is? Maybe if they could extract all the oil first and *then* convert whatever sugars and such are left into ethanol, it could be an even better fuel source.
What would be interesting is a way to have people at home create their own fuels from organic wastes through some sort of natural process. I don't know if such a thing exists (or is possible/feasible), but it'd be a neat idea.
GreenPlease, your last comment on ethanol was not to use fertilized corn. Is that because it's done with fertilizer derived from fossil fuels? I heard a lecture by William Rees (U of Toronto) in which he claims that corn-based ethanol actually uses more fossil fuel to produce than it provides in useful energy. His quote was something like "we're taking food away from people who need it and feeding it to our cars instead, consuming fossil fuels to produce less energy than we started with. Not the mark of an intelligent species." Any thoughts on this position?
@Dave
What you said, about fossil fuel based fertilizer, is spot on. In many cases corn based ethanol is carbon positive which is the opposite of what we need.
We need second generation biofuels now. Those use waste as an input and have the potential to be carbon negative.
I guess I can expect to be purchasing oranges that are white because theyve removed the rhine of the peel for ethanol production. So then the question will be "why aren't oranges orange?"
Brazil's been using sugarcane ethanol in cars for decades, and it produces 56% less carbon emissions than gasoline:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-10/biofuels/biofuels-interactive.html
I don't think they'll be removing rinds from oranges headed to your grocery store, but I image the orange juice industry creates a fair amount of waste that could be converted. And if they can convert orange peels, why not lemon or lime?
It's nice to see a bio-fuel derived from agricultural waste.
Match it up with a citrus battery for a yummy hybrid! :-0
This sort of "science" is the reason why the today's environmentalist is such cut & paste joke.
The orange peel fuel SCAM has been around since the sixties and just like the grain ethanol hype, it too gets rehashed and finds new rubes every decade or so. Ethanol is tapioca; it's main use among legislators (most being rich lawyers) is as a tax shelter --has been since the 80s.
Seriously, the first clue to this scam is right in the lead-in; "discovered in Mexico."