ABSTRACT
Ancient plants supplied the start-point materials that led to geologic formation of oil, natural gas, and coal, a process that originated more than a third of a billion years ago. A major strategy lies with conversion of biomass, or plant material of any kind, into fuels of various types. The key factor is to accumulate biomass in a single locality–lots of it, continuously. The hydrocarbons have a size distribution; furthermore, that resembles that of the hydrocarbons in petroleum. The hydrocarbons contain a high proportion of compounds such as terpene trimers, which yield products similar to those derived from naphtha, one of the principal raw materials that the chemical industry extracts from petroleum. A final source of plant-derived fuels lies with vegetable oils from soybean, sunflower, peanut, cottonseed, rape, castor, olive, coconut, and several squashes. The oil is easy to extract, through mere pressing of the plant seeds, and is suitable for diesel engines.
