10 ms·
Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests
- allears 2mo agoYeah, but until it matches kerosene in price and availability (how many coconuts per aeronautical mile?) it won't actually be an alternative
- SoftTalker 2mo agoJust intuitively I doubt there's nearly enough coconut oil produced to replace any meaningful amount of jet fuel. I scanned the article and didn't see this addressed, but may have missed it. Various other bio-fuel and synthesized replacements for petroleum-based jet fuel have been tried and are in development. The aviation industry is very slow to approve and adopt changes.
- cucumber3732842 2mo agoThe point isn't to make cheap jet fuel. The point is that to the coconut processor (someone who makes food or whatever) your "coconut tailings" pile is a big liability. The environmentalists could start screeching any day without warning, that's a big risk to your business. Waste that costs you nothing could cost a lot. You might be able to sell it as loam or fertilizer or whatever. But then they'll screech that you need to buy somme compliance solution. Just shipping the damn thing off to the next guy who'll squeeze some jet fuel out of it is real attractive because then the rest of the tailings become his problem. Maybe he's in a better jurisdiction. Maybe it's more inert at that point. In any case it's a liability off your books. The jet fuel just needs to be cheap enough to make this whole process cheaper than whatever way you were dealing with it before. It's like this the world over. Whether you're selling coconut scraps to the people who'll squeeze the oil out of them or strawberry waste to the people who'll make dyes and fragrances it's all the same.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoblended with standard jet fuel, in a small-scale micro jet engine
- montroser 2mo ago[dead]
- yread 2mo agoHow is the viscosity at -60?
- clickety_clack 2mo agoDo coconuts grow particularly efficiently? Edit: The US created biofuel subsidies a few years ago and it’s led to poor use of land with questionable climate impact. It’s effectively become a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but there’re probably more effective ways to do that intentionally.
- mdp2021 2mo agoThey already grow, they are already harvested, and this process uses discarded parts of the harvest. It is putting in use what we already had but had no use for. Edit: the article speaks about possibilities that open. It also clearly notices that the a number of problems are unsolved. The infographic is direct: https://studyfinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Coconut-Biofuel-Infographic-1200x675.png https://studyfinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Coconut-Bi... Note that if some product available in limited amount, say "coconut oil", becomes an asset to improve any context, say "aviation", it does not follow that one should maximize that amount psychotically without a cost-risk-benefit. You can just exploit the available yield through planning.
- dylan604 2mo agoTo what scale though? Doubtful it's going to be enough for a replacement. Just as GP stated, the corn grown for ethanol is nothing more than an additive and it is quite easy to find fuel without it. It's a boondoggle and not any where close to being a fossil fuel replacement
- fc417fc802 2mo agoIsn't that simply a matter of cost? It's pretty difficult to complete with pulling an energy dense material out of the ground. If we were to globally tax oil extraction proportional to the actual cost of equivalent carbon capture I imagine biofuels would begin to look quite reasonable. That said it seems to me that tying the energy and food supply together economically in such a direct manner is likely to have some deleterious effects on poor countries.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2mo agoAviation uses around a million metric tons of jet fuel per day. If you thought habitat destruction from palm oil was bad, that would be nothing compared to coconut oil making up any significant fraction of jet fuel.
- not_a_bot_4sho 2mo agoThe question is which habitat destruction is worse? That which is already happening at scale for oil, versus what would happen if we lean into this in any meaningful way. I don't think the answer is obvious. And I think many of us are blind or numb to environmental harms of oil outside of carbon exhaust and the occasional spill, simply because we've accepted it as status quo.
- anfilt 2mo agoAn oil well is quite small Area wise compared to the amount of acreage you would need for a coconut plantations to replace the same amount of energy output. The issue with oil is CO2 and other green house gases and then the occasional oil spill or leak. Land area wise they don’t take up much space
- wartywhoa23 2mo agoAh, the modern debacle, shall we choose this kind of shit or that?
- wronex 2mo agoI think this is awesome. Anything we can do to get away from burning fossil fuel is a win in my book. I don’t know about this particular effort, but it seems to me that aviation could really need some big wins in this direction. Last I looked we still run smaller planes on leaded fuel. Crazy.
- padjo 2mo agoReplacing fossil fuel with biofuel only works if we starve half the planet and use their food for fuel.
- abyssin 2mo agoThis isn’t awesome, it doesn’t work at scale and it only lets idiots ignore what should be done: leave fossil fuels in the ground, and only then do what we can with the energy that’s still available. Aviation is mostly incompatible with a sane global environmental policy.
- bluGill 2mo agoVery few people are willing to accept a, "sane global environmental policy" if it means changing their lifestyle. Thus, anything that allows people to keep (or better yet, improve) their current lifestyle while making the environment sane, that is the one we need to be searching for.
- abyssin 2mo agoYour conclusion doesn't make sense. The logical conclusion of your first sentence is that we'll keep accelerating towards the wall.
- tass 2mo agoLeaded is slowly going away, but regulation means these changes take many, many years and dollars to implement and test. It will be similar (worse?) implementing a new type of fuel for commercial jets, especially when it comes to wide adoption across a majority of countries around the world. Basically you need something which is as least as reliable, clean (I.e., won’t clog/solidify), non corrosive, etc. and remain that way after being mixed with standard jet fuel. I too want to see alternatives but expect to see more failures than success at this stage.
- souenzzo 2mo agoLong life to coconut revolution, in Bougainville island!
- discordance 2mo agoSuch a great documentary: https://youtu.be/Zvhd3tt7fx4 https://youtu.be/Zvhd3tt7fx4
- tornikeo 2mo agoThis is absolutely nuts!
- lovelybunch 2mo ago[dead]
- jameshart 2mo agoMaybe those cargo cult guys were onto something
- pfdietz 2mo agoYou want a fuel that's chemically identical to current jet fuel, not one burdened with extra oxygen. Yes, this would require more energy, but it would be used more effectively in jets. A drop-in compatible jet fuel can be made by hydrodeoxygenation of biomass, using Virent's process. The waste cellulose in current US waste streams would be more than enough to displace all current US jet fuel consumption. An extra source of hydrogen would be needed to do this, but hydrogen can be made renewably (and, indeed, that's a good way to provide dispatchable demand to help deal with renewable intermittency, and will have to be done anyway to displace the use of natural gas to make hydrogen.)
- spaceywilly 2mo agoI agree, I wish more work was being done on building a hydrogen economy. Hydrogen can be generated sustainably, is a great way to store excess energy from renewable sources, can be transported, and as a bonus can be mixed with hydrocarbon fuels to be used directly as a heating source. As an example, a house in NH can generate a lot of excess solar power in the summer months when it uses hardly any electricity. If all that energy could be stored as hydrogen, in the winter (when solar power is less due to the far northern latitude and snow covering the panels) it could draw down on the hydrogen to generate electricity and also use it for a backup heat fuel.
- fy20 2mo agoI'm in Northern Europe and am in that situation. I have an electric heat pump, so would need around 3 MWh over the winter period. Apparently that would need a tank around 4m3 at 700 bar (typical pressure of hydrogen vehicle tanks). Plus the fuel cell actually generate heat, so that could be used for heating too. Doesn't seem terribly unrealistic.
- pfdietz 2mo agoI'm skeptical of any application for hydrogen where electricity could be used directly. In your case, I think hydrogen would better be used in a more centralized power plant as a backup for renewable sources (perhaps with the waste heat then used for district heating), and the power used to drive your heat pump.
- teekert 2mo agoSo we just cut down some ancient rainforests to grow them right? Works for Palm oil! Goooo Planet!
- amelius 2mo agoWill this produce better smells?
- hingedeveloper 2mo agowe've been working on biofuel to replace fossils forever, hopefully it leads to something if not jet fuel specifically.
- evanjrowley 2mo agoCue defense industrial base funded influencer campaign to promote the "dangers" of medium chain triglycerides.
- landl0rd 2mo agoThis isn't proper SAF, it's basically C8/10 biodiesel. No aromatics which is one of the perennial problems with SAF, due not just to volumetric energy density but nitrile seals not swelling enough. Integral wing tank seals usually expect aromatic exposure also. This is why some of the catalytic routes/CHJ are of greater interest, cycloparaffins/napthenes recover some of this vs a more biodiesel-ish blend, but even 50% cycloparaffin doesn't fully recover swell. These are solvable backwards compatibility issues but not in the short or medium term. More egregiously FAME is a polar solvent that eats your elastomers, even some fluoroelastomers. It will also attack your polysulfide tank sealant. The remark that it's "technically feasible" to decrease oxygen through hydrogenation is not at all sufficient. Now you're into requiring catalyst beds and a hydrogen plant which makes this much less appealing. Plus ester instability when you sink heat into fuel. Plus freeze point. This is literally a tracked contaminant banned above mg/kg levels that doesn't even have very good properties otherwise they want to run as a major constituent of fuels.
- shrx 2mo agoMaybe it's time to develop new sealing materials? edit: thanks for the downvote. I should've said "Maybe it's time to _invest into developing_ new sealing materials?" ;)
- Brian_K_White 2mo agoMaybe they should have said something like "These are solvable backwards compatibility issues, but not in the short or medium term."
- panny 2mo agoMaybe it's time to stop burning food as fuel. What are the jets going to do anyway, bomb Iranian children? Remember when George W Bush signed into law the corn ethanol bill. Corn tripled in price within 8 years. Fuel didn't get cheaper. In fact it cost more to produce the ethanol.
- JoeAltmaier 2mo ago
- splittydev 2mo agoIf it burns more fuel, how is it "about as efficient"? That doesn't seem to make much sense to me. > New research found that aviation biofuel made from coconut oil can power a small jet engine about as efficiently as traditional jet fuel, with lower unburned hydrocarbon emissions, though the blends burn more fuel and emit slightly more carbon monoxide.
- chermi 2mo agoBut why? I don't know of a case where biofuels aren't a disaster against the stated environmental purpose. Bailouts for farmers? Sure. A good way to generate green energy? I think engineered algae comes kind of close to making sense as an oil source, but as a fuel would still seem silly to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- legitster 2mo ago> This study used oil from material the researchers describe as discarded and non-edible, including the large seeds and leftover flesh, so the fuel draws on parts of the crop that would otherwise go to waste. This statement seems disingenuous. Surely they did not invent a novel way to extract coconut oil as part of this study and not choose to publish it. Surely this is just existing byproduct that already has plenty of commercial use. If you look at how many coconut plantations you would need to make even a measurable dent in jet fuel demand, this would be an unmitigated environmental disaster. I want to solve climate change as much as the next guy, but chopping down all our tropical rainforests to make it happen sacrifices exactly what we're trying to save.
- VerifiedReports 2mo agoYep, we've seen this sobering reality ignored in previously-hyped "biofuel" aviation stories. Not to mention another glaring omission here: "By adding acetone to a mixture of alcohol and coconut oil" How much energy is needed to produce those two ingredients, and the things THEY are made from? If I were a junior-high teacher, I'd probably give this paper a C.
- dzonga 2mo agoeither wait for bigger batteries, hydrogen or some super efficient material to create the fuselage. biofuels won't work. they take too much land and are inefficient in terms of producing.
- emsign 2mo agoThe issue with bio fuel is the following: Due to climate change the overall area for food production in the world is shrinking. Bio fuel is directly competing with food. The solution: Ditch carbon based fuels as much as possible and replace it with electric transport. I know that it's currently unviable to use electric aircraft in almost all use cases except short range drones. But then the solution to that problem is to rely less on air travel and transport and use land based alternatives. This is about vectors and incentives. Investing in bio fuels to get a 100% replacement for fossil fuels is not going to work and it only stalls what actually needs to happen which is a radical transport system change.
- bluGill 2mo agoThe world is producing far, far more food than we need, though, so your worry is not realistic.
- dofm 2mo agoSo we can't have the dark chocolate Bounty bar anymore but we can use coconuts to fuel planes? This isn't the future I want.
- brikym 2mo agoThey've already got coconut content down to 20% but I'm sure the food scientists are working on the next iteration; A new low calorie environmentally friendly 'fun size', '3-for-1' bounty containing bleached cellulose flakes, synthetic coconut flavor and hydrogenated seed oil.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- dofm 2mo agoI will not be trying that though. Dark chocolate or bust. In the post-apocalyptic future I will be the guy roaming the wastelands, armed to the teeth, seeking out rumoured stashes of Jamesons Raspberry Ruffles and those Roobar things.
- andy_ppp 2mo agoHow many coconuts do we need to support current aviation needs? I’m guessing it’s not likely this will work economically?
- chr15m 2mo ago40 trillion coconuts per year.
- JoeAltmaier 2mo ago50 MTons of coconut oil are produced per year (approximately). Is this a significant amount, compared to oil derived from crude (where gas currently comes from).
- chr15m 2mo agoNo. Around 3.5 million tonnes of coconut oil per year. Around 4.5 billion tonnes of fossil fuel oil per year.
- JoeAltmaier 2mo agoThanks - I was using the wrong table, total coconut or something.
- cwmoore 2mo agoSorry, orangutans, rockets go more up
- effnorwood 2mo ago[dead]
- metalman 2mo agoit's the first time I have heard that bulldozing and burning tropical forests to put in palm oil plantations is "efficient" perhaps profitable , but that is generaly a function of subsidies and regulatory entitlement, in this case "green" that somehow overlook the bulldozers and the brown stained rivers from errosion, running all the way out into oceans where the silt smothers more life,the resulting products stamped with an improbable number of eco certifications, little wreaths and such. So after all that green washing success, why not jet fuel! Gold medal in the cynicism games for sure.
- brikym 2mo agoWonderful. Now a jet flight can consume enough calories to feed a town for a day.
- senectus1 2mo agoplease dont use bio fuels that encourage the growing of plants for fuel. we have a food shortage issue already globally.. waste products, yeah fine. but cutting down large area of forrest/food producing land for the growing of non food plants for fuel is just self destructive corp greed.
- chr15m 2mo agoAround one million coconuts required to fly from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Around 40 million flights per year. 40 trillion coconuts required for all flights, or 1000x current production. To scale up coconut production we need 12 billion hectares, or 80% of the Earth's surface for coconut trees. We need 100k cubic km of water per year, or twice the renewable fresh water on this planet. Ok cool. We will need to terraform Mars before we can fly by coconut. Finally I understand the mad billionaire's plan.
- jeffrallen 2mo agoThe O in "occupy mars" is actually a coconut.
- euroderf 2mo agoHey Alexa, change all paperclip production to coconut production.
- breakyerself 2mo agoWe shouldn't be burning agricultural products for fuels. We should be electrifying and using synthetic fuels made from CO2 and renewable energy where we can't.
- jjk166 2mo ago> using synthetic fuels made from CO2 and renewable energy where we can't. Guess what plants are made of.
- cryptonector 2mo agoDammit, I like coconut oil.
- parimm 2mo agoPart time coconut farmer here. Adding some numbers for a base line. (Note all of these numbers are almost the upper limit of a well managed farm with very good cultivars) Best yielding palms yield ~300 nuts per pals at 70 palms/acre. at 750g a dehusked nut with 20% oil yield You get ~2.3 tonnes oil/acre. For reference an a321neo burns around 2,300 kg of fuel per hour when cruising
- jeffrallen 2mo agoTop comment is a chemist explaining aromatics and seal compatibility. Fourth comment starts with "part time coconut farmer here". I <3 you HN, never change.
- pseingatl 2mo agoWhere is there an ocean of coconut oil to match the Gharar?
- jmorenoamor 2mo agoUsing food as fuel is not a good idea.
- poulpy123 2mo agoCoconut oil can't melt steel beams !