Tag: chemistry applications

What do you do with your banana peels?

Banana peel

I’ve always been a curious person and an environmentalist. Today’s topic came from simply throwing away trash and I found my banana peels. I remembered my grandmother used them in her compost manure but I’m in town and I don’t have a garden so are there other ways of using this biodegradable material?

Banana peel is the outer shell of the banana fruit. It is used as animal food. The mineral composition of banana peel is phosphorus, iron, calcium, magnesium, and sodium. You would be surprised to know that banana peels are also replete with polyphenols, carotenoids, and other antioxidants that can help remove the toxic free radicals from your skin and body. https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/amazing-benefits-of-banana-peels/

Uses of banana peels:

  • Skin care
  • Hair health
  • First aid
  • Cleaning
  • Gardening

Skin care: Potential benefits include hydration, gentle exfoliation, antioxidant effects and wrinkle reduction. Rubbing a banana peel on your face can brighten skin and reduce wrinkles. On closed eyes it reduces puffiness and can be used as a moisturiser to hydrate skin. Rubbing the peel on acne scars helps them fade. It treats psoriasis and relieves itch. All these are suggested by advocates of banana peels for skin but there is no clinical research.

For Hair health: The antioxidant in banana peels neutralises free radical that keeps your hair strong and healthy. It also makes your hair soft and shinier. Proponents of natural products for health and cosmetics suggest using banana peel as an ingredient in a hair mask. I tried this at one time during lockdown in 2020 on my 4C hair. I might say there was a bit of change to my hair lustre.

First Aid: Banana peel has such properties which can give you some medicinal benefits. You can use it for sunburn or for treating a rash or a bug bite. Simply rub the inner side of the banana peel against your skin. https://doctor.ndtv.com/living-healthy/do-not-throw-away-banana-peel-some-unusual-ways-to-use-banana-peels-for-skin-teeth-and-many-more-2105729

Cleaning: Rub the inside of a banana peel on anything made of leather to spruce it up. The potassium in bananas will be absorbed into the leather and will help diminish any scuff marks. Then wipe away any remaining residue and buff with a microfiber cloth for a glossy, looking-like-new sheen. You can also blend a few banana peels to create a paste and use this to scrub your precious pieces using a soft cloth. Rinse your silverware by dipping it in a basin filled with water. Dry afterwards using a clean cloth.

In Gardening, we can add them to soil as worm food or mix them with water to make plant fertilizer. We can also compost them to manure.

There are other people who believe that banana peels can whiten teeth. Now the validity of this trend is purely based on anecdotal evidence. But when it comes to removing stains from teeth, there aren’t any scientific studies that are tagging or liking banana peels for the job.

Some people also eat banana peels. Recommendations include:

  1. boiling banana peels in water to make a tea
  2. using banana peels as an ingredient in chutney
  3. blending banana peels into a fruit smoothie

Are there any other use of banana peels that you have heard of? If so, kindly share in the comments.

Increasing shelf life of organic produce using 1-MCP

When we buy produce we don’t expect to use them all on that day or do we? Sometimes we store them to avoid going to the grocery stores everyday before cooking up a tasty meal.I have always asked myself how these produce are maintained yet remain fresh. The answer was one that I didn’t even know of and many of us haven’t heard of it.

My aha moment came one day in a supermarket as I was shopping with a friend. I had the same question once again but I was too lazy to google it so I asked him. Luckily enough that was the project he was working on for his Bachelor’s degree. I was mind blown despite the fact that I am the one who was studying analytical chemistry and he expected that I knew this. That day I learnt about this new chemical that was discovered in the late 90s and has been in use for more than a decade now. I had made some assumptions about these produce without knowing the facts.

Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom

Socrates

Have you heard of 1-MCP? 1-Methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) is used as a synthetic plant growth regulator. It is structurally related to the natural plant hormone ethylene and it slows down the ripening of fruit and helps maintain the freshness of cut flowers.

How it works:  Ethylene is a gas acting at trace levels throughout the life of a plant by stimulating various processes such as the ripening of climeteric fruit, the opening of flowers (dehiscence process), and the shedding of leaves (abscission process).1-MCP tightly bings to the ethylene receptor in plants thus blocking the effects of ethylene. http://”Ethylene – Wikipedia”

1-MCP powder
Chemical Name: 1-MCP / 1-Methylcylcopropylene
Appearance: White Powder
Cas No.: 3100-04-7
Commercial Use: Fresh keeping agent, Ethylene action inhibitor
Mechanism of action of 1-MCP on Papaya fruit. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Ethylene-and-1-MCP-action-on-papaya-fruit-ripening-and-biochemical-and-physiological_fig4_283855335

Advantages of using 1-MCP

  • 1-MCP significantly reduces the respiration of fruits, vegetables, and flowers, delays aging and discoloration, and maintains hardness, crispness, color, odor, and nutritional content.
  • Effectively enhances disease resistance, reduces decay, and alleviates physiological disease.
  • No toxicity, no residues, environmentally friendly.
  • 1-Mcp in powder form, it is easy to transport, store, and use.

Top Suppliers of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) include: AgroFresh(SmartFresh™), Pace International LLC(Fysium), Fine Americas, Inc.(EasyFresh), Hazel Technologies(Hazel),MirTech, Inc. (FirmConfirm) and Dora Agri.

Careers in Chemistry

This where we begin if you think you have what it takes to undertake a career in chemistry. It is not that hard of a subject as people claim it to be, I believe that it is one of the best subjects. Imagine knowing about life, chemicals and other nonliving things. I assure you that it is something to be loved. Organic compounds, atoms and subatomic particles are what chemistry has blessed us with. Anyway there are many fields you will love if you venture in chemistry. My favourite part of chemistry is organic chemistry; it is one of the building blocks of life. The reactions in it are just amazing and this is an understatement. I personally love creating chemical structures and naming them figuring out their reactions with other compounds. I would love to call it a hobby although it makes me sound nerdy but it is something I enjoy.


Do you love crime solving and detective movies? Well I love them but my favourite part is not the part where they investigate. I love looking at what the forensic scientists do. Personally I think they are the ones who solve the crimes especially on homicides. When I was a kid I really wanted to be a forensic chemist because I saw it online and loved what they do even if they dealt with dead people and I dreaded ghosts. When I was asked I always said I wanted to be a banker or a lawyer because people would think I had a problem if I wanted to deal with dead bodies as a career. At that time I didn’t even know what chemistry was but I still loved this career. So this can be a career choice for anyone if you love chemistry as a subject.


I love creating things but not in an architectural kind of way. I love using chemicals to do different things. If you also love this you can focus on industrial chemistry which I think of it as a great course to do. I have a friend who loves his course so much, one day he decided to kill a rat in his house without spending money. Well he mixed some products that he had at home and poured it in some leftover food as a trap. In the morning on waking up it not only killed the rat but also some cockroaches.


You can also do analytical chemistry. This is my course and I have much to say about it but I think it is the best. Without it we would not have a lot of knowledge in metallurgical, clinical, pharmaceutical or environmental chemistry. Analytical chemists are the ones who come up with methods and procedures for making products. In short they determine what and how much is required. I didn’t know the course existed till I had to choose the university to attend and course I wanted to do. I basically didn’t know what I was looking for but I loved it ever since the first day I attended one of the classes. We can say that I was gambling with my life by making such a choice but it was worth the risk. Business people also make such risks and they may end up failing or becoming successful.


There are many courses to do and I can’t exhaust all of them but others include environmental chemistry, organic chemistry and clinical chemistry.