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Maybe 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?" ;)

Why can’t they synthesize aromatics too? they’re usually shorter chain, seems like they should be easier if nothing else?

> 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.

They 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-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.

> it’s led to poor use of land with questionable climate impact.

In the short term, yes, because they were unnecessarily using carbon energy to grow the fuel.

But if we want to de-fossilise society in the long run, we need solutions for flying and long distance travel. Electric flying seems infeasible at the moment, and people are looking for suitable bio-fuels to make flying carbon neutral. Afaik the maximum planes were allowed to handle up to now, was a 50-50 mix kerosene-biofuel. [0]

Coconuts could be a breakthrough!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_biofuel

Is it not a bad thing to encourage poor people to continue doing the thing that has apparently made them poor?

It's also very not true that farmers are poor in the US (median household income about 30% greater than general population). This mindset is like a century old.

All subsidies are wealth transfers. That's the whole point- to incentivize something that wouldn't otherwise happen at a scale the government deems to be of benefit or necessary.

Biofuels are part of the all-in-one story of renewable energy, especially the transition phase of reducing carbon emissions before we can get to full electrification.

The question of whether or not they are effective in doing so- and whether or not the money for those subsidies would better benefit society elsewhere- is the very same one that skeptics of solar and wind hammer on.

I would much rather see those subsidies go to farmers growing human consumer food, and sending the excess to bioreactors to produce fertilizer and/or methane for power generation. Cheaper groceries make it easier for people to eat more whole foods, after all. Just last week, I found napa cabbage at $3/lb- meaning one head would have been $24. Fresh broccoli and other good veg are also expensive.

The reduction of harm from reduced CO2 by bio-jet-fuel would pale in significance compared to, say, subsidies in regenerative farming practices, or even simply healthy crops.

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

"It’s effectively become a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities"

I'm skeptical that rural community are the primary beneficiaries. Seems more likely that it's benefiting people who own the patents/companies.

Are the people against bioengineered produce also be against us working towards super efficient coconuts or some other plant we designed to fill the same role?

> The US created biofuel subsidies a few years ago

A few years ago? Corn ethanol subsidies have been a thing for my entire life.

It's a net-negative fuel. Costs more fuel to produce than it provides. It's literally just a way to waste water, farmland, huge quantities of diesel (burned by engines exempt from any sort of emissions), labor, etc.

What changed is that ethanol has been forced by regulations into more and more use over time. That has driven up demand for corn, and one of the worse side effects is that a major food staple for Mexico has gone up dramatically in price.

> effectively become a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities,

If you think that's bad, stop and think for a moment about what purpose the US military serves for rural America, both directly through personnel but also indirectly through all the incredibly wasteful equipment, service, and supply contracts.

The US military's primary reason for existence is force projection, but its secondary is keeping rural American's uneployment from skyrocketing.

They literally grow on trees

Same rural communities raise pitchforks upon mention of any other demographic receiving wealth transfers.

Just through this out again, biofuels are dumb. Per acre a solar farm produces 30 times the energy per year as corn without most of the environmental concerns that growing corn has.

You don't have pesticide or fertilizer runoff from solar farms. You don't plow the soil resulting in soil loss.

Biofuels, dumb.

I 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.

Top comment is a chemist explaining aromatics and seal compatibility. Fourth comment starts with "part time coconut farmer here".

I <3 you HN, never change.

Hey Alexa, change all paperclip production to coconut production.

The O in "occupy mars" is actually a coconut.

> using synthetic fuels made from CO2 and renewable energy where we can't.

Guess what plants are made of.

This 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.

Leaded 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.

Replacing fossil fuel with biofuel only works if we starve half the planet and use their food for fuel.

They'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.

No.

Around 3.5 million tonnes of coconut oil per year.

Around 4.5 billion tonnes of fossil fuel oil per year.

40 trillion coconuts per year.

Such a great documentary:

https://youtu.be/Zvhd3tt7fx4

Yep, 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.

The 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.

The world is producing far, far more food than we need, though, so your worry is not realistic.

Just 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.

The 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.