Create fuel from carrots

In Spain, every year hundreds of thousands of tons of food unfit for consumption go to waste. In 2010 about 20% of the collected carrots (420,000 tons) were discarded . The sad reason is that nature has not made ​​them as "beautiful" as some of his sisters, and thus are discarded in the selection process.
To reach the windows of supermarkets, grocery stores, greengrocers, etc ... before must meet quality standards where the form is evaluated, the size and obviously certain aesthetic characteristics of the food.

Luckily, a group of Spanish researchers , in collaboration with the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, in Argentina, have developed a method for some of these plant underutilized, particularly carrots, to be converted into fuel.

How you can become a carrot fuel?

According to Maria Rojas, a researcher at the department of organic chemistry and technical chemistry UNED, any product having carbohydrates, whether simple or complex, can be converted to ethanol by fermentation . "
The carrot has between 8 and 10% simple sugars, and 1% of starch, so from a fermentation process can obtain bioethanol .

Do you want a more technical explanation?

Carrot is processed into small pieces, it is then subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis, where larger molecules formed by glucose break. Once sugar is released, it starts the process of alcohol fermentation , where yeast is used, very similar to those used with wine or beer. These yeasts, which are nothing but fungi have the ability to convert sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide. And ending, ethanol is purified by distillation, resulting in an alcohol with multiple energy potential.

Although this project is still under development, I think it's a smart way to take advantage of these foods that otherwise would be wasted.
In addition, these initiatives make this world a more sustainable place.
Sometimes we simply must use our ingenuity to convert or recycle things that apparently no longer useful.