One of our Planet Forward members contacted me with an interesting question:
I was in my backyard cleaning a greasy mess the squirrels left from an avocado from my tree. It made me think where did the avocado tree get the oil for the fruit? It is old technology about extracting oil from avocados, sunflowers, soy beans etc. But how does various plants make the oil in the soy beans etc? There is no oil in the ground but these plants make oil from soil, elements, rain, humas etc. I believe that with the educational capabilities of us humans today that we can find the answer. It is well known that vegetable oil will work in a combustion motor. If we could take a front end loader of a variety of different locations and drop it in a hopper and get oil on the other end. This is over simplified but with time and effort we can learn the mechanics and duplicate it and make oil from the same stuff plants do. Why not?
There are several ideas about generating fuels from plants on Planet Forward, including one of the most promising ideas: generating biofuel from algae.
Check it out:
Watch Algae as Alternative Energy Source on PBS. See more from Nightly Business Report.
Tell us your idea about generating energy from plants!