Biofuels are probably how we’re going to keep everything rolling once we run out of compressed dinosaurs to burn, but there are real problems with them. Corn-based biofuels are a waste of food and cost more energy than they produce, for example. So we’ve been turning to stuff we’re throwing away anyway, and the latest miracle fuel is…orange peels.
James Clark of the University of York was blasting orange peels with microwaves for…heck, we don’t know, giggles? Anyway, it released a gas, which he captured, and it turns out this gas may be useful for everything we make out of oil right now.
Needless to say, orange producing countries like Spain and Brazil are extremely excited for this, especially since they’ve got a few million tons of orange peels that just sit around and rot. Here’s hoping your car is powered by citrus, because orphan tears are really hard to get.
[ via the orange eaters at Good ]