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Anonymous at Thu, 12 Sep 2024 12:52:14 UTC No. 16376878
The structure of the fatty acid in palm oil looks a lot like a paraffin wax with 2 extra oxygens stuck on. Theoretically then, could you make an edible oil from petroleum by oxidizing parrafin wax with potassium permanganate or something and then esterifying it with glycerin? Could you make soap by doing the same thing but instead making the sodium salts of those synthetic fatty acids?
Anonymous at Thu, 12 Sep 2024 12:59:18 UTC No. 16376888
>>16376878
Just stitch some vinegar onto your paraffin wax.
Anonymous at Thu, 12 Sep 2024 14:21:33 UTC No. 16376971
>>16376878
Yes if you have enough money you can turn various hydrocarbons into other hydrocarbons some of which are edible.
Anonymous at Thu, 12 Sep 2024 17:28:27 UTC No. 16377282
>>16376878
>looks a lot like a paraffin wax with 2 extra oxygens stuck on
Paraffin wax is a mixture of hydrocarbons with 20-40 carbons per molecule according to wikipedia, so I don't know what you mean by this. If you're asking if you can make palmitic acid from paraffin wax directly via functionalization and then conversion to the carboxylic acid, then no. I doubt very many of the paraffins in paraffin wax are straight chain, and none of them are isomers of hexadecane.
Also, note the "paraffin" in paraffin wax. Unless I'm retarded, that means it's basically entirely composed of alkanes. Alkanes do not undergo oxidation with potassium permanganate. There are no functional groups for KMnO4 to oxidize.
Now, figure out how to selectively and usefully functionalize the C-H bonds on the ends of alkanes in high yield, then I suppose you could form random triglycerides from whatever is in your paraffin wax. But then you'd already have made enough money by patenting the functionalization process, since selective and useful C-H functionalization is the holy grail of chemical industry.
I don't know enough about biology/biochem/whatever to tell you if random length synthetic saturated triglycerides are edible or toxic or cancerous or not, but that would be another concern.
Also, yes, you would make synthetic soap if you hypothetically salted a synthetic fatty acid. There is no difference between a synthetic fatty acid and a natural one.
>>16376888
^^^this guy is making fun of you.
Anonymous at Thu, 12 Sep 2024 23:32:40 UTC No. 16377703
>>16376878
You can make palmitic acid from paraffin wax.
What you want to do is plant a bunch of palm trees and build some farm equipment fueled by paraffin wax.
When you burn the paraffin to harvest your crop, you exchange it for palm oil.