Hand sanitiser and biofuel could in the future be made from tequila, according to scientists.

The agave plant, which is used to make the popular drink, could be the key ingredient to unlocking a new way of producing environmentally friendly fuel and sanitiser.

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The plant grows primarily in Mexico but is also found in parts of the US and central and tropical South America.

An international team of researchers has analysed the potential to produce bioethanol from the plant.

The study shows that the plant could be established in semi-arid Australia as a “green” solution to the county’s transport fuel shortage.

Energy demand from the transport sector currently accounts for 60% of global oil use and will continue to rise due to rapidly growing vehicle population in emerging markets.

Ethanol, produced from sugar or starch through fermentation, is the world’s predominant biofuel.

The team has found the efficient, low-water process could also help produce ethanol for hand sanitiser, which is in high demand during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The agave plant is now being grown as a biofuel source on the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland, Australia, by MSF Sugar.

Lead author Dr Xiaoyu Yan, from the University of Exeter, said: “Our analysis highlights the possibilities for bioethanol production from agave grown in semi-arid Australia, causing minimum pressure on food production and water resources.

“The results suggest that bioethanol derived from agave is superior to that from corn and sugarcane in terms of water consumption and quality, greenhouse gas emissions, as well as ethanol output.”

The study found that sugarcane yields 9,900 litres a hectare each year.

Agave outperforms sugarcane on a range of measures, including freshwater eutrophication (where an excess of nutrients leads to excess algae growth), marine ecotoxicity and water consumption.

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Agave uses 69% less water than sugarcane and 46% less water than corn for the same yield. For US corn ethanol, the yield was lower than agave, at 3,800 litres a hectare a year.

The paper, Agave: a promising feedstock for biofuels in the water-energy-food-environment nexus, is published in the Journal of Cleaner Production.