Recent content by Rik

Andy, I don't think you are missing the point. Depending on what the question is, we can bound the problem differently. And it does get complicated. For me personally, the interesting question is the transition of the economy away from petroleum, and how that would impact energy balances. I...

Besides oil refining, the other major use of energy in a well-to-tank analysis is oil production (getting it out of the ground). The transportation and marketing of oil and refined products is relatively small by comparison. The same source of electricity used to refine oil also has some...

Nissan botched it with this number, but I'll give them a pass since they are a car company and not an oil company. I'm assuming that for the calculations that matter to their core business, Nissan knows what they are doing. Besides, it was probably just the Nissan marketing guys who did this...

I found a document that shows all the refineries in California and their on-site production and usage of electricity. See Table 3-1 here http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/special/california/june01article/carefinery.html For 92% of California's refining capacity (data for the other 8% is not...

Look at the units you are working with. You calculated gallons per kWh, while it's kWh per gallon we're interested in.

indyflick, assuming that number is correct, that's 1.2% of the 4,055,423,000,000 kWh of electricity produced in the US in 2005. In 2005, US oil refineries produced 17,800,041 B/d of refined products = 6,497,014,965 B/yr = 272,874,628,530 gal/yr. 48,891,000,000 kWh per yr /...

I don't think most of the kWh consumed by oil refining per gal gasoline numbers being claimed here and on similar forums are even close to being correct. For starters, the claims are a factor of 5 - 15 higher than the oil refinery I support, which because it processes heavy crude, is very...

This is a complicated issue to assess. Some of these "fuels consumed" are byproducts from oil refining. It's not clear whether or not they are counting hydrogen twice, both as something that is consumed by refining and also as something produced from natural gas. Also, most hydrogen in oil...

When my work computer comes back from the IT ICU I'll try to estimate that.

Hmmm... we don't normally think if it that way so I'm not sure. BTW I forgot to mention that natural gas is also used in most oil refineries to make the hydrogen that is consumed in refineries, for the hydrotreating and hydrocracking processes.

Natural gas is used to fire heaters and to produce the electricity and steam that oil refineries use. A byproduct of oil refining is a light hydrocarbon fuel gas that is also burned in refineries, offsetting some of the need for natural gas.

I'm a chemical engineer who works in oil refining. The refinery I work for uses less than 1 kWh of electricity to produce a gallon of gasoline, and I don't think it's unusual in that respect.

Savvy Nav as described by dsurber would go a long way toward alleviating Leaf range anxiety. This is particularly important if Nissan expects to penetrate beyond the relatively small EV fanatic market. How many powerless Leafs stranded along the side of highways does the ICE motorist need to...

We don't have 50 years to figure out how to drastically reduce carbon emissions.

Replacing petroleum-based fuels with natural gas gets around some problems associated with petroleum but does not do enough to reduce GHG emissions. 50% less CO2 than coal is not good enough.