Thread: the vegetable thermodinamic cycle

all right you have a huge transparent system cylinder-piston with a plant inside

you burn something inside, the piston expands

now you let the plant transform the gases into solids with which the piston retracts

to be repeated

there would be 0 emisions and most energy from the sun would be transformed into work

could this be succesfull?

i vote no unfortunately.

the plant would take too long to convert the gases. and I doubt it would convert all of them.

also won't the plant get damaged during the expansion stroke/heat?

It’s certainly a good idea to let plants convert carbon dioxide into fuel for us, but rather than trying to do the whole process in an engine, why not use a conventional IC engine to burn fuel that you can make in an external continuous process such as artificial photosynthesis. Fuel production can be centralized and done on a large scale where there is abundant sunlight and perhaps a CO2 source to enrich the air that’s fed to the process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis