Participation in the "4eso+empresa" educative program

For second year our group has participated in the Educative Program "4ºESO+empresa", sponsored by the Madrid Region. An outstanding student from the high school "IES Atenea, San Sebastian de los Reyes, Madrid" performed a stay in our laboratory from 19 to 21 March 2013. 

Bioethanol from discarded carrots

Our group, in collaboration with the Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Argentina) and the UNED (Spain), has developed for the first time a method that employs carrot discards to produce bioethanol. In 2010 more than 420.000 tonnes of carrots were collected in Spain, according to the  data of the Ministry of Agriculture. About 20% of the crop was discarded because the form or size of the carrots did not fulfil with the standards required.

The researchers are treating to develop the method in pilot scale. The plant is scheduled to be built in the province of Santa Fe (Argentina), and will be able to process between 8-10 tonnes of carrots per day.

N.R. Aimaretti, C.V. Ybalo, M.L. Rojas, F.J. Plou, J.C. Yori. Production of bioethanol from carrot discards. Bioresource Technology, 123, 727-732 (2012). doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2012.08.035