Today, despite the evolution of renewable energies around the world, fossil fuels, including the oil it is still one of the most important resources in the world. Many of the elements that we use in our day to day come from oil. For example, plastics, many medicines, some trinkets, fuels, etc. They come from oil.
Given this important utility and its various uses, we have to analyze alternatives to oil since, as is well known, it is a non-renewable resource and is close to exhaustion. One of the alternatives found by entrepreneurs as a substitute for oil could be the pineapple plant. How could pineapple replace oil?
Esteban Bermudez is a young innovator from Costa Rica and is a founding partner of Scotland. This is a company that develops different innovative projects in which it is to convert the residues of the pineapple plantation into products from a renewable energy source. Apart from power generation, there are also other uses that have been studied and that could be, for example, the manufacture of biofuels, fertilizers for agriculture or edible mushrooms.
This young innovator has been analyzing the activities of Central America and seeing that it is the largest pineapple producer in the world, together with his partner Bjøorn Utgard, they formed Escoia.
The concept in which Bermúdez is inspired is in circular economy. It gives a second chance to the residues of the pineapple plantations. They have been able to adapt a machine to be able to treat the biomass and in this way they can reduce the humidity of the stubble. In this way they facilitate their destruction. In order to come up with this idea, they began in 2014 to research and tour the pineapple plantations. More than 43.000 hectares of plants of pineapples generating waste, could be converted into energy and other products.
As pineapple plantations must be renewed every two years for productivity reasons, the remaining stubble has been sprayed with herbicides and pesticides, so they must be burned. However, these entrepreneurs look for alternatives to reduce the environmental impact and increase profitability.
The innovation is already working, so it only remains that by 2017, they can manufacture a treatment plant for pineapple plant residues. In this way, a biorefinery and resources could be generated from waste.