Pinoy students bag medals for 'pineapple ethanol', 'manure power'

MANILA, Philippines - One Filipino teenager discovered how to make ethanol from pineapple; the other found out that cow dung could produce electricity. For their ingenuity, the two students from Quezon City Science High School were in turn “discovered" by the world. GMA News reported that Avril Bries and Henrian Bayona each brought home a gold medal last Friday from the 16th Environmental Project Olympiad (INEPO) held at the Firat Cultural Center in Istanbul, Turkey. The international competition, which started in 1993, aims to find solutions to the world’s environmental problems, and foster friendship among country-representatives. In this year's contest, INEPO received at least 101 entries prepared by 190 students from 41 countries. The competition had five categories — environmental chemistry, environmental biology, environmental health, social environment, and environmental physics. Bries and Bayona both won first place in the environmental chemistry category. The two were among the Olympiad’s 10 gold medalists. Other students were awarded with 20 silver and 31 bronze medals. Delegates of nine other projects also became recipients of the Jury Special Award. Ethanol from pineapple It was Bries who discovered that ethanol could be produced from pineapple peelings. She produced ethanol through the breaking of the peelings’ carbohydrates into its simple sugar components. “Kailangan po ng Pilipinas ng ibang source ng fuel dahil nag-i-import po tayo ng langis. So ang ginawa ko po, nag-produce po ako ng bio-ethanol mula sa peelings ng pinya (The Philippines needs an alternative source of fuel since we are importing oil. So what I did was produce ethanol from pineapple peelings)," the young girl explained. Last March, Bries also received the top award from an information technology writing contest. She stressed in her winning essay that through sustainable technology, IT products and the environment can co-exist. “It may not be the answer to all the conflicts between technology and our environment, but it’s a giant leap towards the right direction," she said. Power from cow dung Meanwhile, Bayona used cow manure microorganisms as biocatalyst in producing electrical energy. He finished his work of genius with the help of his classmate, Ian Kim Tabios. “Bibigyan ka nila ng score tapos ita-tally nila iyon tapos ilang beses iyon - mga pito o anim - para magkaroon sila ng mga set ng winners (The judges will award you points then they will tally them six or seven times to come up with sets of winners)," an enthusiastic Bayona said in explaining the scoring process of the competition. Bayona’s research also won first place in the applied science category at the 4th National Science and Mathematics Congress of Regional Science High Schools held last February. The budding scientist recently passed the University of the Philippines College Admission Test, where he applied for a Bachelor of Science degree in Speech Pathology. In 2005, Filipino students also won awards from INEPO. Christopher Allan A. Liquigan and Yetlen B. Laboro were each awarded bronze medal for their inventions on bacteria battery. Jeremy Frederick Tayag and Kristine Ann Carandang also won bronze medals the same year for their project on the biodegradation of xylene, a colorless flammable volatile liquid hydrocarbon used as a solvent. - MARK MERUEÑAS, GMANews.TV