Biofuel Cactus
Finally! From the Atacama Desert comes some good news in these days of high gas prices.
The driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, wouldn’t seem an auspicious place for biofuel production.
Biotechnology experts, however, may have found a way to turn one of the desert’s only available plants, the cactus, into energy.
A US$500,000 pilot project in the Río Jorquera Valley in the Copiapó province aims to reduce Nopal cactus stems to high-energy dry briquettes that can be burned in coal-fired thermoelectric plants.
Everyone likes a good cactus briquette.
Here’s a delicious looking recipe for grilled cactus that you can now make on your cactus-briquette-fired grille.
By the way the temperatures in Santiago are very similar to here even though they’re in the Southern hemisphere and all. High 70s for everyone!