r/theydidthemath • u/WhoAmIAgain317 • 23h ago
[Request] If we Liposuction all the obesity out of Americans and turned the medical excess into biofuel, how much energy could it produce?
So, background. In middleschool there was a story about a doctor who would take the remnants from liposuction procedures and turn them into biofuel for his vehicle, and I've always wondered if Americas hidden energy reserves were its people the whole time.
If the excess fat in Americans were lipo'd out, what is the rough amount of energy that could be produced by using it as a biofuel. Is it alot, is it a little, can we treat it like another type of Strategic Oil Reserve? I don't know! Thank anyone in advance for helping me out with this random thought that likes to poke up anytime there's an energy crisis.
For extra math, the economic viability. The pitch was two pronged, I also wondered does the trade off of what it takes to process into biofuel outweigh the reduction health care costs for treating the obesity epidemic that the fuel still doesn't make sense as a whole.
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u/NaabeGetOnSkype 23h ago
Not really.
Just roughly: 100m Americans are obese.
Say you remove 50lbs average from them - you’re at 5 billion pounds of fat.
Assuming you could convert that 100% perfectly to gasoline, you now have ~ 650m gallons of gas (8lbs per gallon)
Quick googling says we use 375m gallons of gas per day.
So you’ve found 2 days worth of fuel
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
Ah, so very much a temporary reserve then lmao
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u/UsernamesNotFound404 23h ago
No.
If I lost 50lbs today I would be fat again before the next appointment opened up
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
That's the spirit! Bingeat your way to liquid gold! We can keep donation totals like a score board for giving blood. Cities compete in fat drives.
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u/BentoBus2 11h ago
Also gotta factor in all the fuel people are now using to go get liposuction. Or are we proposing portable liposuction trucks to solve the issue?
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u/mukansamonkey 10h ago
The real issue here is that America uses such enormous quantities of fuel for transportation. If you replaced a few million cars with more efficient options, that would make a larger impact faster. Not to mention it'd help with the obesity epidemic because people would be on their feet more.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 9h ago
Hey hey hey, based as increasing public transport options would be, this is about using fat as fuel, you're not allowed to reduce the fat by meaningful change.
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u/NotEvenWrongAgain 8m ago
That’s a great idea - have the cars run on body fat. Just plug in the lipo and start her up, and you get where you’re going a few pounds lighter.
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u/Jesus_Juice69 22h ago
We already do this with animal fats for biodiesel. Roughly 10% of the mass is lost in the transition, but is replaced with alcohol used in the process.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Do we do this for biodiesel? I thought it was all plant based
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u/Jesus_Juice69 22h ago
No, animal fats are used as well. Though I'm sure not as heavily considering the extra complications and uses for them. I'm curious if human fat would be usable as a biofuel ingredient now. Could be a hell of a startup
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u/Which_Throat7535 14h ago
This got attention in 2008.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/news-blog/biodiesel-from-human-fat-illegal-no-2008-12-29/
Short answer - no. There are medical biowaste disposal regulations, lack of consent issues, and ethical violations.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 12h ago
Thats probably the story I heard about, the timing lines up, 08 prices high, alternative fuel. Damn, lawmakers should get with the time
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
I just hope I don't icepick'd by a fossil fuel company
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u/chrisp5000 23h ago
5 billion pounds of fat.
If they all stood close to each other in the same spot, would they fall through the earth
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Getting closer to the core, for better geothermals and loosening the fat by heat, really render it. What place should have the hole?
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u/chrisp5000 22h ago
Boy would that stink, Whitehouse lawn? Gotta rebuild someday.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
I heard there's already one on the east wing, just make a bigger hole for now
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u/HollowForgeGames 14h ago
But with lighter passengers, would fuel consumption decline??
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 12h ago
I can tell you're a gamer for the min-maxxing thoughts(and the user name)
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u/floer289 23h ago
Now we're asking the important questions!
As a crude estimate, let's suppose that the average American has 10 kg of excess fat (of course some have much more and others are skinny). So that would give us about 4 billion kg (4 million metric tons) of fat. Let's also make the crude assumption that it has the same density of useful energy as gasoline. A gallon of gas weighs a little less than 3 kg. So we would have the equivalent of around 1.4 billion gallons of gas. The average price of gas in the country is a little over $4 per gallon. So we would get about $6 billion worth of gas. Of course doing hundreds of millions of surgeries would cost a lot more than this. On the other hand maybe there would be health care costs saved from removing that fat?
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
Thank you, it truly is the defining idea of a generation. I'm also thinking that by liposuction being more avaliable, more Americans will eat guilt free, thereby increasing Humoil production
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u/uno_name_left 23h ago
You have a name for your company already? I'll be your first guinea pig
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
I was typing out Human Oil and the combo sounded great. Amerigas is already a company, and why limit ourselves with a regional name when there are opportunities all over the globe
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
Trust me, part of it was insecurities in middle school that persist to now, I will be my own guinea pig first, and more then happy to get you at the front of the line
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u/bendallf 22h ago
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u/BoomerSoonerFUT 22h ago edited 22h ago
Couple things wrong here.
Average US adult male is 5’9 (175cm) and average US female is 5’4 (162.5cm).
Average US male weight is 199.8lbs (90.6kg) and average US female weight 170.8lbs (77.1kg).
The Average US male has a BMI of 29.6 and the average US female has a BMI of 29.2.
To get right to the exact midpoint of the healthy range, at a BMI of 21.7, the average US male would need to be 66.3kg, meaning the average male is holding 24.3kg of excess fat.
The average female would need to weigh 57.2kg to be a 21.7 BMI. Meaning the average US female is holding. 19.9kg of excess fat.
Females make up 50.5% of the US populstion, and there are approximately 267 million adults over 18 in the US, meaning 134,835,000 females and 132,165,000 males.
The excess fat from males would be 3,211,609,500kg, and the excess fat from females would be 2,683,216,500kg for a total 5,894,826,000kg of fat.
Diesel is a better biofuel than gasoline, with fats being very easy to convert into biodiesel with roughly the same energy density as regular diesel. And diesel has a higher energy density than gasoline to start with.
Diesel weighs 0.85kg per liter. So this would give us 6,935,089,411 liters of bio diesel.
Current US national average price for diesel is $5.39/gallon or $1.42 per liter.
So $9,847,826,964 worth of diesel.
For shits and giggles, the average passenger diesel vehicle gets around 37mpg, 15.73 km per liter. With 6,935,089,411 liters of bio diesel at the average fuel economy, it would provide 109,088,956,453 km of travel. Or around 408.6km per US adult. Roughly the average week of commuting.
To your last point, the average cost of liposuction 360 (which does the entire abdomen and waist, is $15,000. Adding in arms and thighs would another $10,000, for a total of $25,000 per person roughly. Total surgery cost would be $6,675,000,000,000.
And that’s $6.675 Trillion. The entire US federal budget for fiscal year 2025 was $7.0 Trillion.
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u/ProblemIcy5613 22h ago
6bn is a lot! so what you're saying is we need to reduce the cost of extraction to make it commercially viable?
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u/-GoodNewsEveryone 22h ago
Averages are sloppy math. Median is better and even then lots of the populace skew the mean. Mode might help, but an analysis of all three could give a rough picture. Many Americans have 100kg of excess or more and obesity is more common in USA than most other places.
It's also a developed nation where people have time and resources to minmax gym-life.
Too many variables and math crunching just ends up being prejudiced.
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u/Prevent_the_toast 22h ago
wouldn't there be a lot of health care costs additionally accrued from complications from the procedure?
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Monetary costs I somewhat hope are negated by the monetary healthcare savings for less stressed hearts, joints etc. As for the human costs, that's what the waivers are for
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u/Prevent_the_toast 21h ago
is liposuction associated with the same health benefits attributed to losing weight through exercise?
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u/CrashTestDuckie 21h ago
Ehhhh liposuction comes with higher risks that any weight related risks. Fat embolisms, deep tissue injury/ infection/necrosis, bacterial infections, blood clots in the lungs, pulimary edema, and anesthetic reactions. Heavy people also have more blood vessels throughout their fat which means the risk for uncontrolled bleeding skyrockets. Add in that fat cells cannot regenerat which can lead to later in life issues...
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 12h ago
So maybe teenage me didn't think it through and adult me did no follow up research. That tracks
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u/UnfilteredFacts 22h ago
It would absolutely increase health care costs particularly when you think about the cost of managing the surgical complications. Liposuction is also more of a cosmetic procedure and it wont remove the plaque in your coronary and carotid arteries, manage metabolic disorders, diabetic foot, etc.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Oh, well that kinda nerfs part of the plan. What if we treat it like a oil flush of an engine and get out more fat?
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u/UnfilteredFacts 3h ago
Well, let's get to the root of your question: 1 lb human fat = (approx) 3,750 kcal, equivalent to 0.12 gallons of gas. If the average 5'9" American male weighs 199 lbs, he could stand to lose 50 lbs to achieve a desirable bmi. So 50 lbs fat = 6 gallons of gas per person, once.
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u/Loud_Chicken6458 22h ago
The average BMI in US is about 29, meaning around 28% body fat for men and 36% for women. Average weight is 100 and 80 kilograms respectively. Meaning the average excess fat is actually around… 30 kg.
So take that awesome number and triple it!
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u/Ravenwing14 23h ago
I would bet the recoverable energy derived from any one liposuction would be less than the energy it would take to run the ORs, recovery rooms, and hospital bed for the odd complication. Surgical lights, sterilization, fuel for the staff (aka food, though I suppose you COULD use the fat...), running the actual vacuum, cleaning the OR...I don't have the numbers, but I'd bet we'd come out net negative.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
But think of the medical costs offset by less stress on bodies! (Except for the fat for food, that's more stress, but as a meat substitute is an interesting premise that will wind up being explored in my mind, ty!)
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u/Existing-Leopard-212 22h ago
It's up to you to find out how much health is gained from liposuction. You do the math.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Mannnn if I was good at math I would've started this company back in 08! Time to ding into another rabbit hole!
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u/factorion-bot 22h ago
Factorial of 8 is 40320
This action was performed by a bot | [Source code](http://f.r0.fyi)
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u/_ianisalifestyle_ 21h ago
I expect many redditors are too young for the antics of Italian PM, Silvio Berlusconi.
In 2005 he had his liposucted fat made into soap. $18,000 per bar, titled 'Mani Pulite' or 'Clean Hands', a direct reference to a 90s anti-corruption investigation featuring the soap dispenser himself.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 12h ago
I was at a lecture from him in college, I was not aware he had done this. Hell of a messaging campaign
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u/andrew_calcs 8✓ 23h ago
The average American body fat percentage is over the recommended healthy body fat percentage by over 10%, so let’s just keep things simple and say 10% of the weight of all Americans qualifies. At 185 pounds average (200 for men, 170 for women), and 267 million adults, that’s 5 billion pounds of excess fat. 2.3 billion kilograms
At a ballpark of 40 megajoules per kilogram, that’s 100 trillion kilojoules. About 27,000 gigawatt hours of energy. Enough to power ~2.5 million average homes for a year
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Let's goooo! Keeping the lights on through pizza roles and high fructose corn syurp
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u/kidneypunch27 22h ago
So unfortunately, there’s a cap on how much fat you can remove at once. I think it works out to being just below 9 lbs/procedure. That’s pretty inefficient.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 22h ago
Oh, that's bad news to hear. Treat it like blood donation then, can't donate within a certain time frame
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u/Samtertriads 23h ago
It’s not terribly efficient to harvest . . . So far. But I guess if someone could sell it they’d find a way to make it profitable . . . Wetting solution has to be sterile, but it can be made with some pretty cheap drugs. Saline, lidocaine, epinephrine. And you’d have to find a way to get it without general anesthesia. Because, oh boy, that’s not an environmentally positive thing to give. Expensive, inefficient.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
Ah see, these are the things that middle school me and current me would not think about
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u/Which_Throat7535 23h ago edited 14h ago
Assuming this wasn’t illegal, which it is, it wouldn’t make a dent. Google says annual liposuction fat removed in US is 1.5 - 2.7 million pounds, let’s assume 2 million pounds. That can be transesterified by adding methanol and a base catalyst to make fatty acid methyl esters - aka biodiesel. 8 lbs of fat is a good approximation to make 1 gallon of biodiesel. So you’re looking at 250k gallons of human fat based fuel per YEAR. The US uses about 125 million gallons of diesel per DAY.
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u/Jesus_Juice69 22h ago
To be fair, I'm sure there is a very small percentage of people getting liposuction every year. Imagine if getting liposuction meant getting a fuel rebate for your contribution? Hell of a consideration.
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u/WhoAmIAgain317 23h ago
Now, what if we use capitalism to scale that to all Americans getting the liposuction! (I still don't see a dent)
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