Spanish engineers have updated the old citrus cliché, bringing it into the eco era — when life gives you oranges, make electricity. In Seville, they’re repurposing the many tons of fruit that the city’s 48,000 orange trees drop in the streets. Instead of a sticky, pulpy wintertime hazard, the methane from these rotting oranges will soon generate clean energy . Seville’s municipal water company, Emasesa, will start this new program by using 35 tons of fruit in a facility that already turns organic matter into electricity. The methane captured from fermenting oranges will drive the generators for water purification plants. If the orange experiment is successful, old fruit could one day supply the grid with surplus power . Scientists report that early trials show that 1,000 kilograms of oranges can fuel five homes for a day. If all of Seville’s oranges were harvested, they could power 73,000 homes. Recent: Vincent Callebaut proposes a green, food-producing footbridge for Paris “We hope that soon we will be able to recycle all the city’s oranges,” said Benigno López, the head of Emasesa’s environmental department, as reported by The Guardian . “The juice is fructose made up of very short carbon chains and […]
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