I hear there is a plant grows in Africa which u could find Petroleum in its seeds!Do u know anything about it?

Question

I hear there is a plant grows in Africa which u could find Petroleum in its seeds!Do u know anything about it?

Answer 1

The previous reply was good.

There are lots of oil seed crops around the world.

Cooking oil, bio diesel, machine oil.

The mention of Africa and their novel plants,

Makes me think of the Nigerian scam letters I'd get periodically.

The US Feds tell us throw them away,

but I use to show them around to friends and co-workers,

post them on our bulletin board and laugh at them.

Answer 2

such a plant does not exist because if it did that would have been in all magazines over the world and for sure not only the rumours from mouth to ears... just something like the pink elephant

Answer 3

Perhaps what u really mean is fuel, not petroleum. If u mean fuel, there are many plants seeds  that we can process to biofuel (biodiesel). Jetropha is one.

The other one which is also originated from Africa  (Nigeria) is oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis). Malaysia is the world number one producer of the oil, but as cooking oil.

It is a perennial crop, taking about 3 years to bare fruits but will continuously producing fruits at the rate  of about 2 bunches per month for the next 25 years of its life. Each bunches weighing about 40-50 kg.

Two different type of oil can be extracted from the fruits. The outer fibrous exocarp layer produce orange colored oil very rich in vitamin E, carotene etc and the kernel (endocarp) produce somewhat clearer oil.

With current technology, the oil can be converted to bio-fuel.

Every 25 years the oil palm plantation will be replanted and the old palm oil tree trunks will be chop down.

These old trunks contains very high percentage of cellulose, which can be processed and  converted to glucose and eventually to ethernol (the bio-fuel). So that is your fuel.

I believe, the biofuel will be one of our future source of power. A lot of scientific works on biofuel are going on now.

Answer 4

It is the jatropha plant (tree). The seeds or nuts  procduce a high quality oil for use as biodiesel.  Since the two-thirds of the people in the developing world who derive their incomes from agriculture and jatropha based biodiesel has enormous potential to change their situation for the better and poverty can be broken by jatropha Cultivation as this dedicated crop has a huge potential for replication world -wide, improving the livelihood of many more.

At the community level, farmers that produce dedicated energy crops can grow their incomes and grow their own supply of affordable and reliable energy

At the national level, producing more biofuels will generate new industries, new technologies, new jobs and new markets. At the same time, producing more biofuels will reduce energy expenditures and allow developing countries to put more of their resources into health, education and other services for their neediest citizens

http://www.asapafrica.org/jatropha.htm

http://www.jatrophabiodiesel.org/