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How an oil refinery works

construction-physics.com

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Re: How an oil refinery works

#121

Post by tesseract »

marcosdumay wrote: post #92
nerdsniper wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me (as someone who has worked on oil rigs, oil pipelines, oil refineries, and chemical plants), crude oil seems far more valuable as a material than as an energy source. It feels like a damned shame that we're still combusting so much of it for heat rather than reserving it for physical materials. I understand the ways that economics are very important, and that the economics still currently favor burning a large…

There is way more carbon in the ground as rocks than as oil. If you have plenty of energy, the difference is quite manageable. Besides, as somebody already pointed out, there is that CO2 on the air that we actually want to get rid of. It's nothing compared to the rocks, and a little harder to get, but getting it first would improve things a lot.

> there is that CO2 on the air that we actually want to get rid of

For this reason I have long been slightly baffled that development of compostable/biodegradable bio-based plastics is such a priority in materials research. Sure, it's interesting in the very long run, but for the foreseeable future, converting atmospheric CO2 (via plants as an initial step) into a long lived, inert material that can just be buried after an initial use seems like a benefit.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#122

Post by EdwardDiego »

ChristopherDrum wrote: post #87

Here's how a refinery works: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/simrefinery-e65 (built for Chevron, in fact) And the manual: https://archive.org/details/sim-refinery-tour-book_202006/mo...

Reminds me of the shareware nuclear power plant sims built for a similar purpose I used to play.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#123

Post by idiotsecant »

ok_computer wrote: post #110
marcosdumay wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is way more carbon in the ground as rocks than as oil. If you have plenty of energy, the difference is quite manageable. Besides, as somebody already pointed out, there is that CO2 on the air that we actually want to get rid of. It's nothing compared to the rocks, and a little harder to get, but getting it first would improve things a lot.

The carbon isn’t valuable elementally as much as it is structurally and molecularly. I mean that as aromatic rings and other ready made building blocks that conveniently can be fractionally separated with pressure and temperature conditions in a column as a gross generalization. All of this is energy intensive but much less so than building up from three atom molecules with strong bonds. And much much less energy int…

[flagged]

Re: How an oil refinery works

#125

Post by itsmek »

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…

"The reason for the CA blend goes back to the 80s and 90s when smog was a much bigger problem. Better vehicle emissions standards since then as well as improvements in the blends the rest of the country uses have largely made the CA blend obsolete so CA is really paying $1+/gallon more for literally no reason"

California cities still struggle with smog. The valley geography capped by inversion layers are unique factors to LA, central valley cities, and some parts of the bay that really do necessitate unique solutions if we don't want to choke. There's sources that back this claim you're welcome to Google. Lastly, based on the overall tenor of your points, I'd invite you to question whether someone with an agenda is driving the incorrect facts you receive in your media diet.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#126

Post by mandeepj »

diginova wrote: post #44

My father actually works at the Jamnagar refinery. I was bought up in there seeing and visiting the refinery as families are allowed for some trips every now and then. I learnt a lot of this process of refining out of curiosity of what my father did and it was just so cool. The refinery in context is the world's largest since more than a decade and seeing it with your own eyes, it feels like a wonder of the world for…

It’s worth mentioning here - the founder (Dhiru bhai) of Reliance used to pump gas in Dubai and that’s where he got the dream to start his own refinery one day. Dream one side, but just going about setting up such a giant production facility at an enormous scale is nothing short of an extraordinary achievement. Pretty sure he had overflow of grit, commitment, and all around strength, and of course high dose of highest level of talent.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#128

Post by refurb »

kerlekarle wrote: post #79

Good read. Just sadly all temperature measurements are in Fahrenheit. Really makes it hard to grasp for the other 99% of the world

If you’re capable of doing basic math in your head you should be able to handle it.

Even if you do a rough conversion - subtract 30 and divide in half you’re close enough.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#130

Post by victorbjorklund »

throw0101c wrote: post #19
t_tsonev wrote: post #5

The article is quick to point out the huge role of oil in the modern energy mix. It also fails to note that most of the energy ends up us waste heat. The so called "Primary energy fallacy". Other than that, it's a great read.

> 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?

I very much doubt that number. Maybe it was referring to 40% of the price of oil for consumers comes from the stages after pumping?
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