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How an oil refinery works

construction-physics.com

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Re: How an oil refinery works

#81

Post by deepsun »

nayuki wrote: post #75
deepsun wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why plastic bags are so cheap -- ethanol is a byproduct, but you earn more if you discard it and sell only oil. But the burned up ethanol would be perfectly suitable for products. Nowadays there are some regulations to prevent that, so they may sell up ethanol at negative prices sometimes. UPDATE: Ethene, not ethanol.

You wrote ethanol (C₂H₆O), but do you mean ethylene/ethene (C₂H₄)? Polyethylene (PE) is a very common plastic, such as HDPE, LDPE, PET.

You're right, sorry, I thought of ethene.

Like here is a good review https://youtu.be/325HdQe4WM4

Re: How an oil refinery works

#82

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

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 also don’t have a source, but I have heard that 15% of global energy is dedicated to handling petroleum (extracting, transporting, refining) which feels like a plausible number.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#85

Post by vel0city »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #72
vel0city wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean to tell me the land of 10,000 lakes might have a shallow water table that might require mounds more often to prevent people poisoning groundwater with their literal shit? The horror. Without hard data about the site I'm probably going to side with the county on that one. As for your friend wanting to improve the lot but needs to do a lot of drainage fixes, he should lobby his community for property tax abate…

This sort of surface level ivory tower "nothing that proclaims to be positive for the environment" attitude underpins so, so much of the bullshit that makes us all poorer and worse off. >You mean to tell me the land of 10,000 lakes might have a shallow water table that might require mounds more often to prevent people poisoning groundwater with their literal shit? The horror. The "land of 10k lakes" doesn't get it's…

> They have surface reservoirs

Sure sounds like potential issues for septic systems

> protected watershed areas

And they're protected by things like being choosy about approving septic systems I'd imagine

> The "ground" is effectively the filter.

And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds.

> The problem is high water table

So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables can give challenges for properly operating a septic system without poisoning your neighbor's water and lands

> why does the government enforce his license monopoly and force people to do business with him?

Because your runoff poisons the ground of the people around you. I'm sure they'd be singing a far different tune if their neighbors were dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground right against their property line. Oh but this is their right to dump their wastes...

> Nobody is gonna add a political advocacy side quest to an already overpriced minor improvement

Sounds like nobody really cares about that overpriced minor improvement.

> This used to be municipally managed. Landowners built drainage as they saw fit. Municipalities managed stuff like streams and culverts and ditches and whatnot, build flood control dams and holding ponds and the like

And then we've realized after 100 years of this its led to extremely bad outcomes of nobody actually paying attention to flooding issues and we get children washed down rivers and billions of dollars of damages on random thunderstorms.

> it has the capacity for the house and nothing more

Probably true, and should probably be connected to proper sewer systems to expand and have more density instead of just poisoning their neighbors.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#86

Post by throwup238 »

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%.

Coal is dirt cheap, to the point where most of the cost is in transporting it and the infrastructure to convert it to power is simple and not very capital intensive to it’s the first thing developing countries reach for when they don’t have strict environmental regulations. It also doesn’t require as much precision manufacturing so a lot can be done domestically even in less developed industries, which is important when foreign currencies are in short supply.

Re: How an oil refinery works

#88

Post by gosub100 »

This doesn't explain anything, but it's a drive-around tour of a now-demolished refinery in Lockport IL in 1989 that operated for 80 years. It's also interesting because it's vintage VHS footage with a quirky French soundtrack. To me it scratches the itch of found footage and backrooms (sorta), plus shows just how massive these operations are.

https://youtu.be/QAkzUAM_ylA?si=VPQuoe7qM_XbbCTh

Re: How an oil refinery works

#89

Post by anenefan »

flumpmaster wrote: post #73
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…

A few corrections. Credentials: I am a Chemical Engineer in a Senior Tecnical Leadership position at a refinery with over thirty years of experience. 1) API gravity is the density of the crude oil. Higher API = lower density. We use this unit of measure because it magnifies the differences in densities vs. using conventional units of measure. 2) Refiners in the US mix different crude types to maximize the objective f…

[off topic] Given your background,I was wondering if you could offer some clarification if I'd read some Bs or just misunderstood. Long ago I had read something in a petrochemical book, maybe I got wrong, but one little section I skimmed over seemed to point out a modern refinery cracking plant could use vegetable input stock with I think was a caveat in regard to cleaning or addition by-products. Is this feasible or done, or was I reading a fluffy passage that wasn't fact checked properly?

Re: How an oil refinery works

#90

Post by cucumber3732842 »

vel0city wrote: post #85
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of surface level ivory tower "nothing that proclaims to be positive for the environment" attitude underpins so, so much of the bullshit that makes us all poorer and worse off. >You mean to tell me the land of 10,000 lakes might have a shallow water table that might require mounds more often to prevent people poisoning groundwater with their literal shit? The horror. The "land of 10k lakes" doesn't get it's…

> They have surface reservoirs Sure sounds like potential issues for septic systems > protected watershed areas And they're protected by things like being choosy about approving septic systems I'd imagine > The "ground" is effectively the filter. And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds. > The problem is high water table So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables…

Gotta love that ivory tower smarmy attitude.

>And it requires so much "ground" to properly "filter", hence the mounds.

There is no point in building up if the ground is sufficient.

MN has basically decided they're not gonna bother considering what that means and just make everyone do mounds at great expense.

>So we both agree there's a high water table, and high water tables can give challenges for properly operating a septic system without poisoning your neighbor's water and lands

That's tangential. Go tee up your dishonest strawman somewhere else.

>Because your runoff poisons the ground of the people around you. I'm sure they'd be singing a far different tune if their neighbors were dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground right against their property line. Oh but this is their right to dump their wastes...

If people are dumping cancer causing chemicals on the ground that's a separate problem than organic waste.

Forcing everyone to manage runoff (which is a seperate issue from septics) like it's a problem by default when 99% of it is clean (seriously, how dirty is the average concrete sidewalk or shed roof or whatever other impermeable surface) wastes money.

Resources are not infinite. If you actually gave a shit about the environment you'd understand that there's other more effective stuff that money could be spent on.

>Probably true, and should probably be connected to proper sewer systems

At. What. Cost.

> to expand and have more density instead of just poisoning their neighbors.

Once again you don't get how it works. The whole point of a septic is that it's fine as long as you don't sink your well pipe through the leech field.

I'm not gonna bother picking your comment apart any further. It's a waste of my time.

I hope someday you buy property and seek to further develop it so that you may reap what you have sown in ignorance.

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