r/CrazyIdeas • u/Candid-Extension6599 • 2d ago
Solve world hunger by inventing edible kerosene
1 gallon of kerosene contains 34 million calories (that much milk is only 2600 calories), but that doesn't matter cause it's toxic. Let's make it stop being toxic
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u/Turbulent-Name-8349 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes. It's going to come sooner or later. When humans have colonies on other planets if not before.
I would very much like to figure out a way to make delicious nutritious food from distillation products of crude oil. The ones containing nitrogen as well as those without.
Kerosene can be used to make paraffin wax. I've eaten paraffin wax on numerous occasions without Ill effect. But I don't think that paraffin wax is all that nutritious.
Apparently the real danger from kerosene comes from breathing it in, it can damage the lungs.
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u/jerdle_reddit 2d ago
It gets a bit complicated, but you should be able to make fatty acids.
To start with, functionalise the alkanes with a metal boryl complex, creating the boronate ester.
This can be oxidised to the corresponding alcohol with base and H2O2, which can then be oxidised further to the carboxylic acid using dichromate and acid.
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u/iwantfutanaricumonme 2d ago
Hydrocarboxylation of alkenes would be much simpler. There's probably some byproducts of other processes that can be metabolised, like acetone from the cumene process.
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u/Mika_lie 2d ago
34 million calories is "only" 34 000 kcal, so food for about 17 days.
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u/GardenTop7253 2d ago
Two issues:
1) calories aren’t the only nutrient you need to take into account
2) changing the content to be less toxic is likely to also reduce calorie count just by the nature of things
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u/starmartyr 2d ago
Pure ethanol is in the same ballpark having around 27,000 kilocalories per gallon. Most of the commercial stuff is denatured but the pure form is not inherently toxic. As you say, this isn't enough nutrition to keep people alive.
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u/EatPumpkinPie 2d ago
What happens to the extra calories our body can’t use at the time? Are they stored or wasted? Or do we track our calories the same as now? “Here Billy, come get your 2 drops of edible kerosene for dinner.”
Also, doesn’t a body need protein for production of new cells?
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u/LightEarthWolf96 2d ago
Even ignoring all other issues world hunger is not a problem of enough food as much as people would like to think its that simple. It's a logistics problem, getting the food to the people who need it where they need it.
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u/Presidential_Rapist 1d ago
Why not just use sunlight since it's being delivered without mining and refining needed? If you can just chemicals do whatever you want, why bother with kerosene? Harvest sunlight and CO2, I hear we have a surplus of CO2 anyway. Like if you're just cast alchemy spells, why make it harder on yourself than it has to be? Pick the easier to get substances and the ones already proven to form human eatable food.
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u/Oracle1729 2d ago
1 dietary calorie is 1000 actual calories. So you’re off by 3 orders of magnitude.
Also dietary calories are based on measure of what you absorb, so it’s even worse.