Peanuts and an Idea

[Science Mac]

Safety and Environmental Requirements: ……

[Science Mac]

Is the oil content in commercial nut varieties sufficient to
develop an agricultural industry based on harvesting nuts as a fuel source?

[ghariman]

Hi Science Mac,

Is this question related to a project that you are planning on doing ?

I think that it is a good question and that it will make a good project. Especially with the recent move towards finding alternative energy sources. So you should use this question as your basis in the first step in the Scientific Method.

Your next step would then be to do some research surrounding your questions. Some good ones would be:
- what is contained in peanut oil.
- what is contained in traditional fuel source (also need to elaborate more on what you mean by fuel source -> source for car fuel, for lamp fuel, etc).
- Look up what people have researched so far in terms of alternative energy sources. In particular look into biofuel/biodiesel.

Then the step after that would be to conduct some experiments.
For example you can try to do an experiment to show how much energy (this is the important point - energy) can peanut oil produce.

I have heard that by modifying a car's engine one can use vegetable oil to be used as fuel for cars. You may try doing a bit of research on this from the internet as peanut oil is vegetable oil.
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html

You might also want to post a question in the Life Science section when dealing with the chemistry side of the research.

Overall I think your idea is a very good one. And I predict it will be a very useful one in the future (your time).

Good luck !

[Science Mac]

This is just a back up project! Just in case I feel that the project I am doing will become too much of a problem! I will continue to look int this project just in case. Thanks for the help!