Gin from peas, infinite hoodie, plant shoe, light and heat stabilizers for agricultural plastics, slimy sea lettuce for biofuels, and more: The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of July 24th

July 23, 2019 |

Gin being made from pea fermentation instead of wheat fermentation, slimy sea lettuce as a feedstock for biofuels, Icelandair is one of the first airlines to start using biodegradable single-use items, , adidas and stella mccartney created a biodegradable tennis dress and a fully recyclable hoodie from old cotton, an an IKEA cookbook bring algae and insects to the table, literally. These are some exciting times! Here are the Top 10 Innovations for the week of July 24th.

In today’s Digest, gin from peas, infinite hoodie, plant shoe, light and heat stabilizers for agricultural plastics, slimy sea lettuce for biofuels — these and more, ready for you now at The Digest online.

#1 Just the tonic! Legume biorefining for alcohol has potential

In the United Kingdom, researchers from Abertay University and other UK universities found that the leguminous crop, pea (Pisum sativum L.), could be a source of starch for alcohol (gin) production, yielding protein-rich animal feed as a co-product.

The researchers conducted a life cycle assessment to compare the environmental footprint of 1 L of packaged gin produced from either 1.43 kg of wheat grain or 2.42 kg of peas via fermentation and distillation into neutral spirit and found that pea-gin had a smaller environmental footprint than wheat-gin across 12 of 14 environmental impact categories considered.

They found that there is great potential to scale the use of legume starches in production of alcoholic beverages and biofuels, reducing dependence on Latin American soybean associated with deforestation and offering considerable global mitigation potential in terms of climate change and nutrient leakage — estimated at circa 439 Tg CO2 eq. and 8.45 Tg N eq. annually.
More on the story, here.

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