Watermelon Wonder
Refueling Your Body…and Your Car?
Watermelons can be used a renewable resource, study confirms.
So we know that watermelon can fuel your own personal sex engine, but could it also fuel your car’s engine engine?
It may sound far-fetched, the notion of using a food to serve as automobile fuel, but it’s at the very least plausible, especially when one considers the amount of ethanol used for fuel. And where does ethanol come from? Corn, of course!
Corn ethanol has been around for many years, but it’s become increasingly popular only recently, due mainly to sky high energy costs and attempts to decrease the country’s reliance on foreign oil suppliers.
In 2007, for example, 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol were burned, twice the amount burned in 2004. And in 2008, 330,000 fewer barrels of oil were imported because of our increased reliance on ethanol.
Now, even though the United States is not exactly running low on corn (despite billions of gallons of ethanol being burned every year, a mere 20 percent of the corn crop is used for ethanol), it doesn’t hurt to have other renewable resources at the ready.
And watermelon may be just be that renewable resource.
Researchers discovered watermelon’s fueling capabilities after analyzing the juice of reject watermelons – melons left in farmers’ fields due to blemishes or rot spots.
After analyzing the viability of watermelon’s more nutritive nutrients – cetrulline and lycopene, to be specific – they found that, indeed, watermelons contain the necessary ingredients to create bioethanol (watermelons have enough sugars to be fermented for ethanol production, and they also have enough amino nitrogen, a critical component of ethanol production).
Writing in the journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, the study’s authors conclude that watermelon “could easily” be used for bioethanol production. However, the researchers note that other fuel sources would have to be combined with watermelon juice for it to work as a truly effective fuel (its nutrient concentration would have to be at least three times higher than it is for it to serve as a stand alone bioethanol fuel producer).
This study was conducted by a team of researchers from Lane, Oklahoma, where the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and Research Laboratory is located.
Is it getting through to you just how amazing the wonders of nature are? This site is devoted to solving your health problems with natural sources of food, vitamins and minerals. Little did we know that our energy problems could be solved with all-natural sources as well.
Sources:
sciencedaily.com
usnews.com
ethanolfacts.com
biotechnologyforbiofuels.com
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Posted: August 30th, 2009 under Renewable Resources, watermelon.
Tags: automobile fuel, ethanol, renewable resource, watermelon
