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How an oil refinery works

construction-physics.com

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Re: How an oil refinery works

#191

Post by KolibriFly »

tkgally wrote: post #107

About thirty years ago, I was given a personal tour of an oil refinery in Yokohama, Japan. I was doing freelance translation then for a Japanese oil company. I mentioned to one of my contacts there that I would be interested in actually seeing the sort of equipment I was translating documents about, and they arranged a visit for me. Two things stand out in my memory: Even though the refinery was in full operation, we…

The odor point is interesting. I think a lot of people mentally picture refineries as visibly dirty and smelly by default, but a plant near dense urban/residential areas probably has very strong incentives to be almost boringly well-contained

Re: How an oil refinery works

#192

Post by KolibriFly »

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…

That must be an incredible place to grow up around

Re: How an oil refinery works

#193

Post by KolibriFly »

shhsshs wrote: post #9

As someone with no real-world petrochemistry experience, but much gaming experience, I was very surprised how familiar the crude oil processing diagram looks. Factorio and GregTech are two prime examples of fairly realistic oil processing lines (probably as accurate as any game would reasonably try to be).

Factory games are weirdly good at teaching the "shape" of these systems

Re: How an oil refinery works

#194

Post by KolibriFly »

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.

Primary energy comparisons can make fossil fuels look more "irreplaceable" than they are, because so much of the input energy is lost as heat before it becomes useful work

Re: How an oil refinery works

#195

Post by tosti »

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...

If we're playing games, SpaceChem was one of the coolest games I've ever played.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#196

Post by fuzzfactor »

munificent wrote: post #164
pjc50 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live there's been a long running saga around flaring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/c6wk2ml6gwzt When it's lit at night you can see it from up to twenty miles away. Closer in you can hear it. Things have gone back and forwards on mitigations, fines, industrial disputes, and in the end the plant is closing.

I grew up in Louisiana in Cancer Alley[1]. At night, we rarely got to see stars because the flares gave the sky an orange glow. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley

You might have smelled Baton Rouge before the Clean Air Act of 1990 kicked in.

And that was long after the emission cutbacks of the 1970's had taken place, back when it was really rank. But the EPA had not been around very long at that early point.

Driving across the state of Louisiana you could feel better stopping to nap in the car for a few hours in a far-away mosquito-infested rest stop next to a low-lying bayou during a flash-flood warning, rather than get a hotel room in the state capital, it smelled so toxic.

Don't ask me how I know . . .

Re: How an oil refinery works

#197

Post by pfdietz »

rawgabbit wrote: post #190
pfdietz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could be needed is internalization of external costs. If you release chemicals that cause problems, charge the polluter, and send the charges to those affected. On a global scale this breaks down, because governments value the lives of non-citizens orders of magnitude below the lives of their own citizens. The US will spend millions to save one expected life at home; it will avoid spending thousands to save one…

The problem with "costs" is that when companies are finally faced with steep fines or lose a lawsuit, they would often declare bankruptcy or a spin-off a division and dump all the obligations to the spun-off company which would go bankrupt. The only thing that works, I believe, is the threat of criminal penalties with actual jail time.

That's a good point, so laws requiring bonds or insurance would also be needed. This could be an incentive towards at least limiting the worst case outcomes; if those are too large insurance may not be available.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#198

Post by sophacles »

tesseract wrote: post #121
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.

> 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 af…

Biodegradable is only one type of degradation. Some of those compounds break down over time, or with exposure to uv or random stuff in the ground, into nasty compounds that you certainly don't want entering the water cycle or food cycle. An additional attribute of biodegradable therefore is: keeps (non CO2 pollution down).

In addition, things that biodegrade don't immediately just turn into CO2. Things like biomass (that is everything alive and dead that isn't decomposed) use a lot of that carbon. A significant fraction of the carbon in rotting stuff doesn't end up in the atmosphere for decades or longer. The carbon cycle isn't just "CO2 becomes plants which become CO2"... there's a lot more steps in between (for example, next time you eat... you are a direct next step!). Some of those steps take a very, very long time.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#199

Post by dredmorbius »

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?

The energy may go into net processing of the oil, and measures such as EROI or EROEI give some indication of this. But transporting oil itself is ridiculously easy. A supertanker can move a cargo halfway around the world for roughly 1% the energy contained in that cargo.

Much more energy expenditure comes from refining itself, or in the case of shale and tar sands, in heating vast volumes of rock or sand to liberate the (usually very heavy, thick, and "sour") tar-like oil contained within.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI>

Re: How an oil refinery works

#200

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Most of any fuel used for motive power ends up as waste heat simply due to the inherent (in)efficiencies of the Carnot cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle>.

Where liquid hydrocarbons (not necessarily petroleum, but also biofuels and synfuels) have clear wins are:

- Overall energy density. By both mass and volume, little short of nuclear power exceeds this. Battery storage is roughly 1/10th the density of liquid hydrocarbons by mass.

- Handling ease. Liquid hydrocarbons, particularly kerosene (jet aviation fuel), diesel, and fuel oil are quite mild-mannered. Even the rather more rambunctious petrol is safe enough for ordinary civilians to dispense, store, and handle, for the most part. Liquid hydrocarbons can be stored at ambient conditions in simple containers, are largely non-toxic, and can be piped or flowed readily between locations.

- Storage stability. There are very few energy options which are as stable in storage for days to years or more.

- Ease of utilisation. Electric motors are arguably simpler, but other options, including direct (as in on-board) nuclear are not. Again, untrained civilians can use small to large internal combustion engines readily.

In particular, there are usage modes, most notably air, marine, and mobile / remote-location applications, where liquid fuels are quite difficult to substitute for. Ground-based and inland-waterway transport can be electrified, but long-distance freight and passenger travel whether by sea or air not so much. Efficiency considerations pale next to the handling and utilisation characteristics.

I'm not defending fossil fuels, and again the arguments apply equally to liquid hydrocarbons of any origin. But given the properties, prevalence, and low cost (however illusory that may be) of petroleum-derived hydrocarbon fuels, they're not trivially substituted for in all applications.

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