I read this article on Gizmag Bioethanol from Olive Stones and it slapped me in the face.  Living in Turkey, I see a lot of olive trees.  Not just a lot but A LOT.  Albeit I absolutely despise the taste of olives, I love every other product that comes out of the incredible fruit.  And now reading this article on how we can produce ethanol fuel from the stones, I am just couldn’t help myself to do an early Saturday morning brain teaser.

After a little research Olive Growing in Turkey, I roughly calculated that Turkey produces 1.808 million tonnes of olives (16 million world production, Turkey produces 11.3%).  From the first article, about 25% of an olive is the stone which leaves 450,000 tonnes of stone for biofuel production.  Converting the stones to kg leaves 450,000,000 kg.  If 100kg of stone produces 5.7kg of ethanol, then a quick calculation means that Turkey could potential produce 25,600,000 kg of ethanol.  Converting to a usable scale in liters, ethanol has a density of 0.789 kg/L,  leaving 20,198,400 L of ethanol as an untapped resource in Turkey.  Interesting to say the least.

FYI Henry Ford designed the first mass-produced automobile, the famed Model T Ford, to run on pure anhydrous (ethanol) alcohol—he said it was “the fuel of the future”.

For Reference: (Random google searches)

7.6 liters ethanol from 100 kg wood waste

24.3 liters ethanol from 100 kg corn waste

40.2 liters ethanol from 100kg corn

1.1 liters ethanol from 100kg sugar cane

6.23 liters ethanol from 100kg sugar beet

Further reading material; Ethanol Fuel, Curing the oil crisis: Starch or Sugar based Ethanol versus Cellulosic Ethanol