Team:CSU Fort Collins/Description
Description
Introduction
Ever started peeling and orange and automatically been overtaken by the beautiful smell of citrus? The cyclic terpene limonene can be thanked for that. This platform chemical is found in beauty products, common household cleaners, and acts as a biological solvent. The versatility of this chemical is endless, and the great thing is that it is environmentally friendly, as it is naturally produced by citrus fruits, lavender, and strangely enough, Chinese catnip.
There are different extraction methods of limonene, the most common one uses steam distillation. Getting into the nitty gritty of this extraction process proves to be pretty irrelevant and boring, so why do we care? Well, waste orange peels are typically used to supply different companies with their fair share of this fruity oil, but orange prices are not stable at all. With all of the fluctuating factors that are put into growing a single orange, it is easy to see how this could be a very slippery slope. This is one important factor that attracted us to the idea of experimenting with the production methods of limonene.
Limonene is kind of like Leonardo DiCaprio winning an Oscar: so close to being accredited to greatness, but never really fulfills this prophecy. This is a chemical that exists in so many different types of products and has a myriad of different applications. The applicability is a very pivotal feature of limonene, but another one of its' perks is that it is a biodegradable chemical as it is naturally produced by plants in the environment. The chemical structure of this molecule is so versatile that scientists are looking to create a biodegradable plastic called polylimonene carbonate in the future.
Just like the people want Leo to win an Oscar, we want limonene to be the next big smell-good, multifaceted chemical that can change the world. When life gives you oranges make a little bit of limonene, but when life gives you archaea you make massive amounts of limonene. Note: Go Leo for finally winning an Oscar.
