Research
To research, you first must have a question you are trying to answer, so I came up with a list of questions I would need to answer to make my product:
- What plant could I use to make my fuel out of?
- How would I grow my fuel source?
- Would I need light to grow my fuel source?
- How quickly can I grow my fuel source?
- How could I measure how effective burning it is?
- How would I make it a more effective burner?
- How would I form a plant into a usable fuel source?
- Will my fuel source pollute?
What plant could I use to make my fuel out of?
From prior knowledge, I think mushrooms generally grow faster than plants, so I researched to be sure. I went to ehow.com, with the search term "what is the fastest growing plant" I got that the Giant Timber Bamboo grows 4ft in 1 day. Then I went back to ehow and looked up "What is the fastest growing mushroom", and I got that mushrooms can germinate in a couple hours to a couple days (some appear overnight, so they appear than less than 12 hours in some cases). Since Bamboo is generally much taller than most fungus, but it takes less time for the fungus to fully grow, I would say that they grow about at the same rate, proportionately to the maximum size. So, since I want a fast and usable plant, I will use mushrooms to make my fuel out of for 2 reasons. 1. Mushrooms grow quickly and are do not need sunlight (They appear overnight) and 2. Bamboo would be too water needing, exclusive to Asia, and hard (Bamboo is a very strong type of wood, and cannot be easily broken) to use.
How do I grow my fuel source?
Since I will need to grow my mushrooms to access the fuel, I will need to have a plan to grow them. I do not have a specific mushroom type that I will use, this will be a method to grow only one type of mushroom-- Cremini Mushrooms. First, you get a type of agriculture waste product, like straw or coffee rinds, and you blend them up in a shredder or blender so that they would adsorb water. The next step in preparing the substrate (What the mushroom grows in), is to pasteurize it. The simple way to pasteurize the substrate is to place the straw in a wire basket, and place the basket into a drum filled with heated water. You then let the straw cook for 1 hour at 160 degrees. Once the substrate is prepared, you mix the spawn (mushroom spores ordered beforehand) into the substrate and lay it into a large tray. After 2 or 3 weeks, the mycelium has grown and you need to place a pasteurized peat moss layer over the substrate. Make sure after placing the layer you carefully control the humidity of the room, and in 17-25 days the mushrooms will be matured and ready to use for fuel. If you want a larger Portabella mushroom, wait 3-7 days extra before harvesting the mushrooms
Will I need light to grow my plant/How long will it take?
Yes, I will need light to grow my fuel source. I will need indirect sunlight for maybe three hours after the mycelium has been formed to spark the pinning process. It will take, at the most for a Portabella mushroom 53 days and at the least it would take 31 days, 34 for a Portabella mushroom. If you are reusing the mycelium, it would take only 17-25 days to grow a Cremini mushroom and 20-32 days for a Portabella mushroom.
How could I measure how effective burning it is?
To measure how effective burning my fuel is, I could get one quarter pound of my fuel, and one quarter pound of car oil or coal. Then, I could burn both under the exact same conditions(Taking safety measures), measure how long they burn and the temperature they burn at by heating water or metal. Then I could compute the ratios: for every 5 seconds it burns this hot, It burns (temperature) for this long, and Oil burns this much worse/better than my fuel.
How could I make it a more effective burner?
Before I find out how to make my fuel burn more effectively, I need to know what the problem with the fuel is. If the fuel is to damp and moist, I would need to dry it, and if the fuel burns too quickly, I might need to make the mushroom more resistant to fire. To dry mushrooms, you first clean them with a brush, and then cut them into 1/8 inch thick slices. Then, you put them on a baking sheet and cook them at 150F for an hour. Store them in an airtight container in a dark, cool place. Since it would be extremely unlikely that anyone would be burning mushrooms, I looked how to make things in general burn longer. I learned that to make pinecones burn longer, you dip it in melted paraffin wax a couple times, let excess wax to drip off, and then let it harden.
How could I form my plant into a usable fuel source?
Since I am already finished with trial one and two (They both ended in a failure), I know that I have to resort to my plan B, making ethanol or mushroom oil out of the mushrooms. I choose to make ethanol. To make ethanol, you place the corn (or in my case mushrooms) in a container, fill it with warm water, and drape a cloth over it. For a base ratio, you need 6 pounds of plant, 20 pounds of sugar, and 60 gallons of water, and you can size it down to scale. You also need one packet of activated yeast. I researched why corn is in ethanol, and I got that corn is in ethanol for carb content, which most mushrooms have none of. In conclusion, you cannot make mushrooms into ethanol because they don't photosynthesize.
Will my fuel source pollute?
No, my fuel source will not pollute, even though it would technically release CO2. It releases CO2 because when something burns, the constant byproduct is CO2. The reason this CO2 doesn't pollute is because the source of the CO2 that was released was obtained from the air just two weeks ago. In conclusion, the CO2 is just proceeding on with the carbon cycle. The reason oil and fossil fuels pollute is that you are taking old CO2 and placing it with the new CO2, and effectively doubling the CO2 in the air.