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Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

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Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#191

Post by adrianN »

spaceywilly wrote: post #134
pfdietz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'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.

The issue is long term, high capacity storage. To store enough energy to last an entire winter using batteries just isn’t practical today. I think you’d need around 100 power walls at today’s capacity to make a house completely off grid, meaning you store excess solar from the summer and draw it down in the winter. With hydrogen stored in pressurized tanks, a 20 m3 tank could be enough to last the whole winter, which…

Storing hydrogen in big underground salt caverns at reasonable pressures and converting it back into electricity in a big power plant is probably more efficient and safer than storing it in millions of tanks in cellars at 700 bar and using small fuel cells to turn it back into electricity.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#192

Post by somenameforme »

bawolff wrote: post #110
europoorean wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities My immediate reaction to this is: it's probably a wewlth transfer to the few landlords owning the land and probably charging higher rent, not to the communities. Of course I haven't analysed the data. If I am wrong, hopefully someone will feel compelled to correct me.

Don't most farmers own their own farms? (or work on a corporate monstrosity farm). How common is farm landlords?

The largest private single owner of farmland in the US is Bill Gates. [1] He owns [1] - https://nypost.com/2023/11/25/business/how-bill-gates-quietl...

[2] - https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Re...

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#193

Post by salynchnew »

europoorean wrote: post #57
clickety_clack wrote: post #6

Do 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.

> a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities My immediate reaction to this is: it's probably a wewlth transfer to the few landlords owning the land and probably charging higher rent, not to the communities. Of course I haven't analysed the data. If I am wrong, hopefully someone will feel compelled to correct me.

Yeah, it's not like the few remaining small, family-owned Indiana farms (which are either very specialized away from corn or basically lifestyle businesses at this point) are benefitting from this in a meaningful way.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#194

Post by Animats »

xp84 wrote: post #116
Animats wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch. There's one plantation of under 1000 hectares in Papua New Guinea that makes biodiesel from coconut oil to power their own operation and vehicles on the island.[1] But they don't export. On an island with few energy sources, the process makes sense. This is more like an industrial process that self-powers from its own waste. Sewerage treatment plants do that - the process produces methane, often enough to power…

^^^ this I cringe thinking about more biofuel ideas getting forced through. Sure, let’s all spend a ton of petroleum energy on fertilizing, farm equipment, and processing, and raise food prices by using all the land for producing ethanol-corn, and jet fuel coconuts, just to get a slightly worse petroleum replacement fuel.

[dead]

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#195

Post by defrost »

mapt wrote: post #117
bawolff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most farmers own their own farms? (or work on a corporate monstrosity farm). How common is farm landlords?

Depends on the area, but the vast majority are owner operated. The question begs some other questions though. One is more about what fraction of the economic production of the farm industry is owner operated; There is a long tail of now-tiny farms that are not economical to actually sow and harvest, which nobody could actually earn a living from. If it's 10 acres and somebody bales hay at almost breakeven, is it real…

> Conversely, there are a lot of very productive 5000+ acre farms comprised of many older properties combined together ...

I can't speak to US farm practices but note that 5,000 acres is 2,023 hectares and a bit less than half the average size of farms in our local farming cooperative (CBH, Western Australia). today they are still mostly extended family farms formed from buying up and joining together many smaller post war farms.

> that are "owner operated" in one sense, but demand many farmhands and a lot of machinery to manage.

The "mean farm" of 4,500 Hectares (11,000 acres) here is typically managed by three full time workers and machinery, along with a network of mechanics, seed suppliers, pooled harvest hands etc.

> Is an owner-operator farmer who controls so little of the business directly

Again, I have no comment wrt US practices - here owner operators formed their own cooperatives to build out and co-own their rail, port, silo, seed storage, agronomy, facilities and via bulk production of > 20 million tonnes of grain per annum have leverage to make demands of equipment manufacturers.

> If it's 10 acres and somebody bales hay at almost breakeven, is it really a farm?

I know people that own 10 to 15 acres, live in very old farmhouses that have been fully overhauled to current standards and lease their cropable land out to form large thousand acre paddocks which receive back enough money to cover rates and improvements.

They own the land, they often tun AirBnB as a side earner, the land is farmed at a profit.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#196

Post by defrost »

joecool1029 wrote: post #130
bawolff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't most farmers own their own farms? (or work on a corporate monstrosity farm). How common is farm landlords?

>Don't most farmers own their own farms? (or work on a corporate monstrosity farm). Why not both: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill

Alternatively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#198

Post by fuzzfactor »

zweifuss wrote: post #19
clickety_clack wrote: post #6

Do 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.

Middle of the road, comparable to Sunflower oil. But they want to utilize waste products and a low energy conversion process.

I think with waste products there is more of a last-mile (first-mile?) collection issue. Regardless we're definitely seeing some processed bio-oil waste coming in to the diesel lab for analysis in the recent year or two.

Looks to me like someone who is prospering based on coconut plantations would be the beneficiary from tapping a new market from a jet fuel process, and it probably could be made into a cleaner fuel than the waste-based bio-fuel.

Re: Coconut oil jet fuel matches kerosene's efficiency in engine tests

#200

Post by qdog »

tolien wrote: post #106
WalterBright wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought over a pound of steak the other day for $5. (Yes, it was on sale. But it is frequently on sale.) Along with a potato for 50 cents, that's cheaper than a bag of Doritos. Oh, and I bought a banana for $.22. Cooking a steak takes about 10 minutes. Microwaving a TV dinner ($7.50) takes more time.

This canard again [0]? You're comparing one piece of beef with a massive bag of Doritos. The banana's irrelevant, but last time you compared it to an enormous block of chocolate [1]. From experience a microwave meal should take about 3 minutes to cook so I don't know how you're taking more than 10 minutes unless, like your food item comparisons, you're cooking enough of them to feed an entire town. 0: https://news.yc…

This is possibly the craziest goddamn conversation I've ever seen on HN. Michalena's swedish meatballs are like $1.50 for 350 calories[0].

It's been a while since college, but I would guess they are delicious when compared to Walter's shoe-leather brand steak. Mac-n-cheese of various offbrands also cheap, and potato flakes ridiculously cheap.

Marie Callender and Stouffer's are not cheap, they are convenient.

Steak takes me like 45 minutes, gotta season, let it sit. On stovetop need a cast-iron skillet, 5 minutes to heat it, etc.

Also cooking time doesn't really matter a lot, I'd use a toaster oven because the meatballs tasted better, and would be studying or whatever waiting for the timer.

0: https://www.instacart.com/store/products/42133-michelina-s-s...

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