Orange Biofuel

?The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has not yet commented on the new OPEC’s (Orange Peel Exploitation Company) plans to make fuel out of orange peels.

An international team of researchers has assembled an optimistic partnership named OPEC, for Orange Peel Exploitation Company that is predicting the successful use of orange peels in the future as a new source of biofuel and other related products. OPEC says that orange peels are a perfect example of the tremendous potential that current food waste represents as a possible source of renewable biofuel.

Reports and studies conducted by the American Chemical Society indicate there are real world benefits just waiting to be utilized from citrus waste. According to the society, global agriculture produces some 15.6 million tons of orange and other citrus waste annually in the form of unused and discarded peels that could be put to use producing biofuels along with related citrus bio-based solvents, fragrances, water purifiers and other projects.

One big problem with turning the earth into a more citrus-based planet is also a problem with the entire citrus industry as a whole in that nearly half of the entire worldwide harvest of fruit products goes to waste in the form of discarded peelings. All those citrus peels also represent a significant environmental liability with their ultimate disposal because the two current and most-employed options of citrus peels disposal are burning and dumping them into landfills, and both are practices that contribute directly to more undesirable greenhouse gas emissions. Another looming problem noted by the American Chemical Society is that our current choices for reclaiming used orange peels are not very good. Large-scale orange juice manufacturers can process the peels as a partial source of livestock feed or extract the pectin from them for use as a food additive, but the reclaiming processes also require additional expenses and increased energy use at the same time.

The newly formed OPEC organization’s decision to explore citrus-based biofuels puts it in company with
the University of York in the UK, the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and the University of Cordoba in Spain in the hopes of developing a “zero waste” bio-refinery process that will use high-intensity, low temperature microwaves to extract any remaining liquids from the cellulose in citrus peels, instead of depending on currently available mechanical processes or the addition of acids, both considered as “non-green” methods of extraction. After separation, the cellulose and liquids gathered can yield a variety of other valuable products beyond just biofuels. The list of possible alternative products includes limonene, a compound that can be used as a fragrance, in household cleaners and as a solvent that could replace currently available petroleum-derived products like pectin, which is also often used in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and foods, as well as cellulose, which is mostly used as a thickening agent or can be converted into an effective solid biofuel itself.

If the OPEC goal of producing clean biofuel from citrus peels works out, in addition to the obvious cost-savings benefits, the process could also allow juice producers and manufacturers to promote themselves as green, zero-waste facilities, and they won’t have to pay anyone to dispose of the unwanted orange peels as cattle feed. OPEC hopes to have its first bio-refinery up and running soon in the UK, while researchers at the University of Central Florida have already been working on developing their own method for refining ethanol from orange peels by using enzymes from the tobacco plant. While these multiple efforts to utilize orange peels as a cost-effective and environmentally safe replacement for gasoline is great news for many different types of businesses, the more commonly known “real” OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) has not commented on the issue yet.