If you’ve ever sliced up a tomato for a sandwich or a salad, there’s probably at least a bit of the fruit that you didn’t end up eating.
There’s a research project in Europe that aims to collect all those leftover tomato bits into an alternative fuel for jets.
The project is called ToFuel (the team seems to have grabbed the name before anybody tried to use it for a jet fuel made out of tofu) and it’s headquartered at the Graz University of Technology in Austria.
Europeans eat huge numbers of tomatoes each year, but of course tomato production always has some leftover organic material.
Think of leaves and stems, or fruit that went bad before it could end up on someone’s table.
As Interesting Engineering reports, those bits may not be useful on our plate, but if you put them through specialized processes involving heat, pressure and fermentation, they turn into a kind of bio-oil that’s full of energy.
That oil is part of a recipe for a jet fuel that’s both effective and meets a set of international benchmarks for sustainability.
The fuel production could also have benefits for farmers, food producers and restaurants, since they could sell this tomato excess instead of just throwing it away.
The project is set to launch next month; the backers say it could help meet one of the EU’s sustainable fuel goals by the year 2030.
I wonder whether they used one of those Pomodoro tomato timers to set that deadline?
Today in 1941, a photograph for the ages, thanks to a photographer with some gumption.
After giving a speech to Canada’s Parliament, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to one portrait.
At the last second, photographer Yousef Karsh grabbed Churchill’s cigar away.
“He looked so belligerent he could have devoured me,” Karsh said, but the photo captured the defiant spirit that kept Churchill’s country fighting during the worst of World War II.
I’m Brady, Karsh titled his work “The Roaring Lion.”
Scientists turn tomato waste into climate-friendly jet fuel to cut aviation emissions (Interesting Engineering)
The Taming of Winston Churchill (On This Day)
