201–209 of 209 posts
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.
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> Gotta love that ivory tower smarmy attitude. When did, "I don't want people poisoning my water," become ivory tower smarmy attitude?
It was the tone of the reply, I would imagine.
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Wow. I grew up in Houston, and I assumed that the smell from these plants was pretty-much unavoidable. It's shocking (and I guess not all that surprising) that this is a choice that manufacturers make. I guess it really does depend on the economic power of the surrounding communities.
When? I don't know Houston, but I recall in MN a refinery that made the whole area stink for 10 miles around. 15 years latter I went by and the air was great even when driving buy the main gate. Soon after my brother in law got a job at that refinery and he told me that for a years they decided the EPA fines for releases were a cost of going business, but when management decided to clean up they were quickly able to…
There are a few times I've been in Pasadena (the town East of Houston), and I've just started retching from the smell. I don't understand how anyone can live there (and my father did for many years.)
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Not really a big deal. The numbers are cumulative. The Reliance Brownsville Texas facility will only process 60 million barrels per year. That's 1% of annual US refining capacity. > It's interesting to both see Asian majors and EPCs increasingly dominating the petrochemical chain You really don't want downstream in your backyard, though. The environmental oversight in these countries is...less. Meanwhile, it's a hype…
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So I agree - delete your account. Ciao
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Yes, Hydroprocessing units at refineries can either co-process vegetable oil with hydrocarbons or run 100% on vegetable oil after some modifications. Vegetable oils are tri-glycerides. These molecules can be cracked into three long chain paraffins and a propane molecule by reacting them with hydrogen at high temperature and pressure over a catalyst. This makes a raw diesel fuel that then needs to be isomerized to low…
Started my career working in AI for a company that had a couple large refineries (I didnt dare refer to what we were doing as statistics because those guys had all been fired a decade before after attempting to perform some back magic they called six sigma), pipelines, a fleet of ethanol plants (at the time) and a couple biodiesel bets, including one that attempted to convert corn oil into biodiesel. I was blessed to…
I am curious as to what is meant. Refinery side innovation or marketing or other?
In Australia over the years there's been a heavy focus on bio fuels and not any mention of renewable diesel or jet fuel. News items focus on modern vehicles, and not older diesels that of course could run on peanut or coconut oil without any chemical modification.
My locale (Northern Central Queensland Aust) bio-diesel is often produced small scale by individuals and not enough to be a statistic that I can find as a percentage of use in the state. Scaling up shouldn't be a problem in itself, it's just reluctance to use the present food oils as stock.
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Likewise, a lot of the complaints people have about data centers are engineering choices. If companies can get away with it, they'll do it the cheap way.
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…
Often the pushback on these "polluter taxes" is that they increase the costs of downstream goods and therefore the consumer pays it anyway, but I think when the link of how the consumer is "already paying" is made clear (as was easy in the case of municipal WM taxes) it's also easier to see how the costs would actually reduce in the long term (bc for "management" this is another line item they can optimize via reduced pollution rather than some vague cost to society via property taxes)
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
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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…