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How an oil refinery works

construction-physics.com

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Re: How an oil refinery works

#51

Post by vel0city »

bluGill wrote: post #42
vel0city wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the new refineries in Oklahoma and Texas. Two truly new refineries in 50 years despite lots of growth of demand throughout most of those decades. The fact there's only been two in fifty years and neither is anywhere near operational is proving my point. These are largely aberrations compared to the last fifty years , and its extremely notable the larger one is being built largely by a foreign oil company wanting to…

You ignore all the upgrades existing refineries have had. They pollute much less these days than when built. In 10 years your new refinery will also be old and not up to modern standards. It too will need upgrades.

I fully see the improvements and say awe to the incredible achievements they've done. I live with the people who work such plants, I know what they do. I also see the ancient plants that live with such outdated designs and and overall suck environmentally. I see there's been a lot of improvement to many plants, don't get me wrong. There's far more to know than when the plant was first established, I agree.

All of my life has been around the oil industry, I'm well bathed in it.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#52

Post by ufmace »

criddell wrote: post #7
jmyeet wrote: post #2

This is a really good overview of oil refining. I'll add a few things. 1. The light and heavy distinction is covered by a measure called API gravity [1]. The higher the API gravity, the lighter the crude; 2. Refiners mix different crude types depending on what kind of refined products they want to produce; 3. Heavy crude tends to be less valuable although it's essential for some applications. Lighter crude produces g…

Looking at the chart in the article I was kind of surprised at how small wind and solar are globally and that coal is still ~25%.

I believe that it's a physical plant thing. We have spent over a hundred years building hydrocarbon-based energy infrastructure. Much of that is still out there. Wind and solar have made a ton of progress in the last 15 years or so, but it's only really become substantially better financially in the last 5 or so years maybe. It's still going to take decades to actually replace most of that stuff, just as a matter of how fast we can build and install hardware.

Note also that it's a worldwide chart, so it includes developing countries that may not be so quick to jump on projects that are expensive right now even though they'll save a bunch of money in the long term. Though to be fair, some may have a leapfrog effect when it comes to building brand new infrastructure.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#53

Post by criddell »

jeffbee wrote: post #30
criddell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That chart is measuring joules of energy. I'm not sure efficiency comes into play here, does it? Coal provides 175,000,000 TJ of energy. Solar and wind provide 21,000,000 TJ. I was mostly surprised at how critical coal still is. https://www.iea.org/world/energy-mix

That is still subject to the primary energy fallacy. Those reports are in terms of primary energy, i.e. how much heat is released by combustion of fossil gas. But in order to replace fossil gas in a chemical plant, you need much less electricity than the primary energy of the fossil gas suggests.

The IEA says[1]:

> For all energy sources, the IEA clearly defines energy production at the point where the energy source becomes a “marketable product” (and not before).

Doesn't that mean if you are burning coal to make electricity, you wouldn't count the heat output because the generated heat is not a marketable product.

[1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/understanding-and-using-the...

Re: How an oil refinery works

#55

Post by sokoloff »

dmurray wrote: post #49
throw0101c wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. I've heard the statistic that 40% of the total oil pumped out of the ground just to transporting oil. We use almost half just to move it to and fro before even using it. Is this accurate?

This can't be accurate. Let's say a barrel of oil travels 15,000 km from Saudi Arabia to Texas, gets refined, gets shipped another 10,000 km to Europe, then the last 1,000 km overland by truck. This reasonably well sourced Reddit post [0] says big oil tankers burn 0.1% of their fuel per 1,000 km, smaller ones a bit more. Say 0.2% on aggregate, that's 5% for the whole journey, 10% because the ship is empty half the ti…

> you'd expect 40% of the vehicles to be tanker trucks.

I’d expect tanker trucks to carry far more fuel than the typical vehicle.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#56

Post by jeffbee »

criddell wrote: post #53
jeffbee wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is still subject to the primary energy fallacy. Those reports are in terms of primary energy, i.e. how much heat is released by combustion of fossil gas. But in order to replace fossil gas in a chemical plant, you need much less electricity than the primary energy of the fossil gas suggests.

The IEA says[1]: > For all energy sources, the IEA clearly defines energy production at the point where the energy source becomes a “marketable product” (and not before). Doesn't that mean if you are burning coal to make electricity, you wouldn't count the heat output because the generated heat is not a marketable product. [1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/understanding-and-using-the...

I interpret "marketable product" to mean gas at the wellhead, coal at the mine terminal.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#57

Post by ufmace »

tmellon2 wrote: post #13
arlobish wrote: post #6

Cool to see how when people talk about “transitioning off oil” it's more than replacing gasoline in cars. It's replacing this entire global machine.

Oil is cooked. BYD is filing 52 patents every single day and has a 700 km in 9 minutes vehicle available TODAY ! Charging by Solar is going to be the norm. Watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgCYYrhL-kE

You seem to be copy-pasting this around this thread a lot, what's the deal with that?

I would agree that electric is the future, but even if all that works as advertised and we keep making more progress, it's still going to take decades to manufacture the billions of them that will be needed to seriously displace oil. I believe oil will continue to be necessary and relevant for the lifetime of everybody old enough to write posts on this thread.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#58

Post by criddell »

jeffbee wrote: post #56
criddell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IEA says[1]: > For all energy sources, the IEA clearly defines energy production at the point where the energy source becomes a “marketable product” (and not before). Doesn't that mean if you are burning coal to make electricity, you wouldn't count the heat output because the generated heat is not a marketable product. [1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/understanding-and-using-the...

I interpret "marketable product" to mean gas at the wellhead, coal at the mine terminal.

I didn't interpret it that way because of this line from that page:

> [Total Final Consumption] shows the energy that is actually used by final consumers – the energy used in homes, transportation and businesses.

I'm not buying coal at the terminal to power my television.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#59

Post by jeffbee »

criddell wrote: post #58
jeffbee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interpret "marketable product" to mean gas at the wellhead, coal at the mine terminal.

I didn't interpret it that way because of this line from that page: > [Total Final Consumption] shows the energy that is actually used by final consumers – the energy used in homes, transportation and businesses. I'm not buying coal at the terminal to power my television.

Indeed, but were we not looking at TPES before?

Re: How an oil refinery works

#60

Post by criddell »

jeffbee wrote: post #59
criddell wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't interpret it that way because of this line from that page: > [Total Final Consumption] shows the energy that is actually used by final consumers – the energy used in homes, transportation and businesses. I'm not buying coal at the terminal to power my television.

Indeed, but were we not looking at TPES before?

Yes we were.

Looking at the chart for TFC, the wind and solar case looks even worse. Wind and solar supplies 2 million TJ compared to 36 million for coal.

All I was really trying to say from the outset is that I'm surprised at how important coal still is and how little we use renewables. I see articles here all the time about the massive advancements in solar (and wind to a lesser degree) and I had it in my head that renewables were a much larger part of the energy mix than they are.

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