Fuel can be made from almost any organic material; corn, soy bean, hemp, really almost anything that can grow. As far as the feasibility of using coconuts to make fuel, well, I think that it would be rather a poor source of bio material. How many acres of coconuts trees would one have to grow and for how long? There are many other sources of bio fuel material that can be grown in shorter periods. Hemp, for example can produce a tremendous amount of bio fuel material per acre in a relatively short span of time. In some climates, two or even three crops of hemp could be harvested for this purpose. I wonder whether the same could be true of coconuts?

Updated the site with more accessible files.

www.cocogas.com

I didn't read the link, but I have heard that biodiesel is made from palm oil. It's made from all sorts of stuff ofcourse but palm oil is cheap.

The problem will be that because it is the cheapest source, if biofuels take off in a big way, palm oil plantations will also take off in a big way, and they are already de foresting to grow palm oil in India and other countries. So the de forestation will be immense if palm oil is allowed to be used for fuels.

Personally I don't think mankind can win in the race to find a solution to our energy problem. There are 6 billion people soon to be 7 billion. As India and China come into the modern world the effect on Earth is going to be immense, through de forestation and pollution.

Something catastrophic is inevitable, the population of earth will soon plummet, my guess is about 100 years from now.

When our computers crash we have a reset button, so it will be with Earth, eventually the reset button will be pushed.

I read a list that had palm oil as producing the highest oil yield per acre at about 600 gals. of oil per year.

Originally posted by MBF
I read a list that had palm oil as producing the highest oil yield per acre at about 600 gals. of oil per year.

I agree. Just woul like to point out that all animal and vegetable oils including palm oil can be a source of hydrocarbons. The oil is first saponified. The soap is then decarboxylized to produce hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons produced are similar to the hydrocarbons found in gasoline.

600 gallons per year, per acre? 1 barrel is 42 US gallons of crude. That would be about 14 barrels of oil per year, per acre of coconut oil. I read where you only get roughly 20 gallons of gas from a barrel of crude oil after refinement. In a year, the US consumes about 146 billion gallons of gas.

If all those totals are basically the same for coconut oil, that's a heck of a lot of palm trees.

Originally posted by BRQuick

If all those totals are basically the same for coconut oil, that's a heck of a lot of palm trees.

Yes I agree...Lots and lot of palm trees. I am now a believer that biofuels is not the answer to the oil problem.

THe paper just shows that we can produce a mix of aliphatic hydrocarbons and glycerol from different kind of oils (animal, vegetable, used cooking oil).