Response 1: Biofuel From Food Waste.

I found this article very interesting. I never thought about how ethanol can come from wasted food. It's really cool that school lunches can be transformed into power that not only fuels transportation but also fuels the distillation equipment required to transform the leftover food into fuel. Also, if you think about it, the amount of food wasted in the U.S. each year is ridiculous. Especially in schools where kids either don't eat their veggies or they just waste half there meal because it's gross. If these leftovers that no one will eat could be turned into fuel, then that would solve two problems at once. There are problems with this idea as in all ideas though. The first quote which I took from the article however is something I would never really think about at all, but could definitely be a problem. If many fields are converted into making the food that goes into ethanol, then what happens if you run out of room to grow the crops? I also wonder if land can be overused and loose its fertility.
The second thing this article looks into is a brief overview of how ethanol is made. The leftover food is separated several times into liquids and solids, gases and more leftover liquid. Ethanol is a type of alcohol so the food goes through a fermentation process too. I found all this information very interesting as well as helpful in my quest to understand sustainable fuels better. Ethanol is only one solution to this problem, but because it is often mixed with gasoline, it may not be the best.

Article 1: Biofuel From Food Waste

-food shortages have been thought to have been caused by too much land being used for biofuel crops instead of food crops.
-200 kg of school food waste is transported "to a local processing plant" where it is broken down and enzymes are added. Then waste is then separated into liquids and solids. The ethanol is "extracted from the liquid through fermentation," and biogas is taken from the solids and left over liquids of the wasted lunches.
-The ethanol is used to run the buses and any other school owned vehicles.
-The biogas that has been saved "powers a 9.9 kW generator and a boiler used to operate the distillation equipment."

I have been researching technology in sports for a while on a number of different databases and have found that there is not as much reseach as I thought available. I had not realized that this topic would have to be current within two weeks so I was not prepared for this change. I still want to research the topic, but I feel it is not current enough to sustain an isearch for 5 months. I am now switching my topic to my second favorite idea, sustainable fuel. This topic was my second choice to technology and sports. I am almost just as excited to be researching this topic.