Grape vines, grape seeds, skins, pulp and stalks can now be used to run your car.
Researchers in Australia announced on Sept. 29 that they have developed a new technique in which the parts of the grapes and vines not used in wine production could be converted into biofuel.
Avinash Karpe, a researcher at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, has been investigating the technique as part of his Ph.D research. Karpe discovered a means to break down wine production waste, which is largely composed of cellulose, pectins and lignins into simpler compounds that can be used to produce ethanol or other biofuels.
“Various fungi are known to degrade this waste by generating an array of enzymes,” Karpe said. “These enzymes convert the waste to soluble sugars which can then be converted into other products.” Karpe discovered that a 30-minute heat activated pretreatment aided in the breakdown of these biomolecules.
This fermentation process takes one to three weeks and produced alcohols, acids and simple sugars of industrial and medicinal interest.
He said that although, the technique, biodegradation using fungi, is not very new but the application of symbiotic fungi to improve biomass degradation is comparatively new.
'The work we do is only in its infancy in Australia and it will require a lot of help from chemists, engineers and economists to make it a commercial success. It will take a fair amount of time to reach that stage. However, we believe that this development will be sooner than later,' Karpe predicted.
'Transport of wine production waste from a winery to a landfill is a substantial expense for producers. We are trying to create a process which any local winery could use to convert its waste to either biofuels such as ethanol or other commercially important chemicals,' he said.
Ethanol produced from foodstuffs, especially in the transport industry is used as an alternative to fossil fuels. The US produces about 15 billion gallons of biofuel from cornstarch each year. Brazil produced 5.57 billion gallons in 2012 from sugarcane.
Together, Brazil and the United States lead the industrial production of ethanol fuel, accounting together for 87.8 percent of the world's production in 2012, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics.
Scientific studies about producing green energy from biomass (biofuels and biogas) have been carried out in various universities in Turkey in particular in Bogazici University, Marmara University and Istanbul Technical University, said Burak Demirel, a scientist at the Institute of Environmental Sciences at Bogazici University in Istanbul.
A major change in finding alternative energy resources occurred during the 1980s oil crisis when Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) restricted the oil supply, creating a global spike in petroleum prices. Since then, biomass, among others has become an alternative source for fuel manufacturing.
Australia is the world’s sixth largest wine producer, with around 1.75 million tons of grapes crushed for wine every year. After the final pressing, more than half of the materials used in wine production end up as biomass waste comprised of skins, pulp, stalks and seeds.
by Gulsen Cagatay
Anadolu Agency