Watermelon Juice Makes Great Biofuel

Mike writes "Watermelons are more than just a tasty summer snack — researchers at the USDA have determined that the fruit constitutes a promising and economically viable source of biofuel. It turns out that the relatively high concentration of directly fermentable sugars in watermelon juice can be easily converted into ethanol. Rather than grow fields of the fruit for the purpose, the report suggests that farmers capitalize on the 20% of each annual watermelon crop that is left in the field because of surface blemishes or because they are misshapen."

Comments

The more important question

[Misanthrope]

As a homebrewer, does this actually taste decent?

Re:The more important question

[Rei]

Winemaking: Watermelon Wines.

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[account_deleted]

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Wasted fruit?

[Odo]

The real news is that 20% of the watermelon crop is currently thrown out due to cosmetic issues. I don't understand why shape and surface issues would disqualify the fruit from use in processed foods. Such as watermelon juice, fruit salads, sweeteners, etc. If true (and the article did not provide citations, this represents a stunning waste.

Re:Wasted fruit?

[Useful Wheat]

My family owns and operates a peach orchard in Colorado. I've helped with harvesting the trees and pruning the crop, and I'm reasonably familiar with the entire process. Any kind of surface defect or imperfection results in the fruit being thrown on the ground, or discarded. Our farm is fairly small, and only the truly massive farms can really make money selling fruit at less than grade A standards, because the prices are simply awful. Its just not worth the fuel to ship it at that point.

Most of your grade "B" fruit and veggies comes from grade "A" fruit that sat around too long, and was sold at the lower price rather than thrown out.

Re:Duh

[Darkness404]

I don't think its the fact that they can be turned into biofuel but the fact that we are pretty much just throwing away 20% of potential crops that can be used for it, so we wouldn't need to use new fields or change crops. On the other hand, pretty much all the corn grown for ethanol could be used for human consumption (yeah, you might need a different type of corn).

Easy...

[denzacar]

Have you ever held a fully grown watermelon?
How about picked and loaded a truckfull of it, taken it to the market and then be told that you should either return a part of it cause they are bellow the buy-off quality or that you will be paid less for those watermelons, again on account of lower quality?

It is WAY cheaper to do quality control before PICKING, and just grow more to cover for the statistics.

Re:As long as we don't claim it to be the solution

[interkin3tic]

Exactly. Iowa's early primary ensures that any canidate trying to raise more money has to take the pledge to support ethanol as a biofuel. If they point out how wastefull and pointless it's been, they'll have a weak showing there, and their campaign contributions will take a hit. Plus no congressman with eyes on the presidency would be willing to vote against corn for the same reasons.

Ethanol subsidies have been a huge waste, the money is all going to ADM, which is the last company we should be giving it to.

That wiki page also has some interesting stats on the taxes. "every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30." And we're STILL dependant on oil. It's not even that they take corporate welfare, I'd be mad enough just based off how lousy an investment that is.

Why do we continually overlook the obvious?

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Although watermelons and corn can make biofuels: I offer you a much better alternative: Kudzu vine. It's already been synthesized into kudzuhol Kudzu grows up to a foot a day, it's the vine that ate the south. It just seems a waste to convert perfectly good food to biofuel.