Fueling Cars with Plants?

Plants have been suggested as a renewable fuel source, but so far methods to extract their stored energy have generally not been efficient enough to make them competitive with fossil fuels. Vegetable oils make up only a small portion of plants' mass and the energy output of ethanol is only around 10% greater than the energy input required to make it.

New research has developed a method to use carbohydrates, which can make up around 75% of plants' dry weight, to produce a fuel much like conventional diesel. While the process used to make the fuel is very efficient, efficient extraction of the carbohydrate from plant matter has not yet been developed.

Links:

• Green diesel: New process makes liquid transportation fuel from plants from the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison


• Plant carbs harnessed to power cars from nature.com (subscription)

Posted by Eric La Fountaine at 3:27 PM on January 18, 2006