My best guess is that either freezing or storing them as a liquid in an inert environment could be quite economical, very rough OOM maths:
For frozen storage
Apparently ice costs ~$0.01/kg to produce, this is just for the upfront cost of initially freezing, oil would be similar/lower because it has a lower heat capacity and similar freezing point. The cost for keeping it frozen is not that easy to work out, but still I would say “well the square-cube law takes care of this if you are freezing in large enough quantities” so I would be quite surprised if it were way more than the $3.7/year depreciation cost (OOM logic: even if it melted and you re-froze it every day that would only cost $3.65/year).
For liquid storage
You can store crude oil for something like $1.2 to $6[1] per barrel per year, with the cheapest method being putting it in salt caverns, but other methods are not way more expensive. This corresponds to about 2 person-years of calories with palm oil ($0.6 to $3 per person-year for storage). There are some reasons to think storing an edible oil[2] could be more expensive:
You would probably need to backfill with an inert gas to preserve it
Other food-grade safety related things? Although I think this would be a misguided concern tbh because it’s intended for a use case where you would otherwise starve, so it only has to not kill you, it could be quite contaminated
And reasons to think it would be cheaper:
You would be storing for a known, very long, amount of time, so you could save on things required for quick access to the oil (like pumps)
It’s easier to handle, less flammable, no noxious gases etc
I would guess the cheaper side would win here, as backfilling with an inert gas doesn’t seem very hard if you have a large enough volume. Apparently oil tankers already do this (not sure about salt cavern storage) so this may be priced in already.
“Global Platts reveal that the price of onshore storage varies between 10 and 50 cents per barrel per month.”, then adjusted based on 158 litres/barrel, corresponding to ~140kg of palm oil, which is 2 person-years worth
Just about oils specifically:
My best guess is that either freezing or storing them as a liquid in an inert environment could be quite economical, very rough OOM maths:
For frozen storage
Apparently ice costs ~$0.01/kg to produce, this is just for the upfront cost of initially freezing, oil would be similar/lower because it has a lower heat capacity and similar freezing point. The cost for keeping it frozen is not that easy to work out, but still I would say “well the square-cube law takes care of this if you are freezing in large enough quantities” so I would be quite surprised if it were way more than the $3.7/year depreciation cost (OOM logic: even if it melted and you re-froze it every day that would only cost $3.65/year).
For liquid storage
You can store crude oil for something like $1.2 to $6[1] per barrel per year, with the cheapest method being putting it in salt caverns, but other methods are not way more expensive. This corresponds to about 2 person-years of calories with palm oil ($0.6 to $3 per person-year for storage). There are some reasons to think storing an edible oil[2] could be more expensive:
You would probably need to backfill with an inert gas to preserve it
Other food-grade safety related things? Although I think this would be a misguided concern tbh because it’s intended for a use case where you would otherwise starve, so it only has to not kill you, it could be quite contaminated
And reasons to think it would be cheaper:
You would be storing for a known, very long, amount of time, so you could save on things required for quick access to the oil (like pumps)
It’s easier to handle, less flammable, no noxious gases etc
I would guess the cheaper side would win here, as backfilling with an inert gas doesn’t seem very hard if you have a large enough volume. Apparently oil tankers already do this (not sure about salt cavern storage) so this may be priced in already.
“Global Platts reveal that the price of onshore storage varies between 10 and 50 cents per barrel per month.”, then adjusted based on 158 litres/barrel, corresponding to ~140kg of palm oil, which is 2 person-years worth
You couldn’t actually use palm oil in this case, because it’s a solid, but e.g. sunflower oil has similar calories/$