Biting into a slice of tangy orange and tart lemon soaked with sugar syrup is like a grown-up version of gummy bears. Now you can make that zest into a treat all on its own. If you bake, you know how the tiniest bits of citrus zest pack big flavor. You can make candied orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit and even clementine peels! They taste great by themselves, as something to nibble with a sip of tea or coffee, or as mix-in for yogurt or other snacks like trail mix. Homemade candied citrus peels are delicious. Our results showed that higher concentrations of clementine peel resulted in higher algal growth, thus supporting our hypothesis.If you’ve only tasted commercial candied citrus peels, you are in for a surprise. Data was collected by calculating the cell density before and after one week for each bioreactor, and then averaging the results. To test our hypothesis, we set up a total of eight bioreactors: two served as control, three served as low concentrations of clementine peel, and three served as high concentrations of clementine peel.

We hypothesized that because a clementine, a citrus fruit hybrid between a mandarin orange and a sweet orange, is rich in antioxidants that in higher concentrations it will produce more algae growth. Since the balance of nutrients plays a large role in algae productivity, we wanted to see if a citrus fruit peel (specifically a clementine), would benefit algae growth.

In our experiment we wanted to test what factors affect the rate of algae growth.

Algae can be found in all aquatic environments, however Biofuels Research and Aquatic Quality Collaborative (BiRAQC) focuses on researching local species of algae, so the focus of our study will be Chlorella vulgaris, a type of algae that can be found in Oklahoma waters.

Clementine peel