How much electricity does an oil refinery use?

So add electricity to help clean up our electric grid! I love it!

Well, this poses a problem for me. How do I address the folks who are accusing me of calling our base-load producers "cleaner" than the fast-to-spool-up peaker plants - as well as addressing the folks who point out that the base-load producers COULD be cleaner with better technology?

Ummm. Yes? I guess. I'm not really sure how to respond.

As usual, EVs are caught between a rock and a hard place.

1. If I say that if EVs use power from a plant that would otherwise be inefficiently idled, that the resulting power is "cleaner" than if the power were used during peak grid times - then I'm told that those base-load generators are dirty coal plants, and thus charging an EV at night on coal is dirtier, not cleaner.

2. If I say that power plants are dirty when they're idled - then I'm told that we just need to apply some technology, and suddenly they're squeaky clean like a Prius. So if there IS a problem with using base-load plants to power EVs.. then this solves it and there's no more argument, right?

My claim is that using "idled" power now is better than leaving the plant idle... and that future technologies will make the situation even cleaner.

To formulate any sort of relevant discussion we have to either stay in the present... or we all move to how the future could be. The fact of the matter is, every EV gets cleaner as we clean the grid.... and gas cars get dirtier as oil gets harder and harder to find/extract/refine/deliver.

 

My claim is that per unit of energy, it is cleaner and cheaper to use under-utilized power plants that are "idled" - doesn't matter what fuel they consume. It is of course better to take the dirty plants offline completely - but if the're sitting there chugging along, we're all better off if we actually get something out of them. Of course the REASON that night-time power production is with coal is because these are the plants that can't be shut down - like NG and some others can be more easily. So if we could shut down all electricity consumption for a few hours every night, we would NOT save any pollution from our coal plants - with the way things are today.

Tough crowd. I feel like the one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest in this thread!

 

It's not rocket science. Load balancing always allows for efficiency options, so it makes sense to shift some load to after hours.

As for the butt kicking, perhaps you should wear something more protective than Spandex.

Tom

 

Well, sure this is simple. But I'm still sure you're also wrong. I think.

Next plan is to wade into a dog fight in my milk-bone underwear.

 

I only meant to play that hand. Overplaying it was not intended.

 

There is a very detailed analysis of this by ANL, IIRC. I'm sure if there is enough interest I can find the link.

BTW, it is not only the coal plants that are idled. In WA, wind mills are also idled. It is great to be getting 100% renewable electricity here and driving Leaf. As I noted earlier, I also save power since I'm not responsible for the use of power needed for the refinery that fed my 20 mpg sedan.

 

Please do! Thanks!

Yep . . . on the way to Palm Springs, there is a HUGE wind mill farm - and frequently, less than half of it is up and running. There can't be THAT many on the fritz.

 

Resurrecting the thread. A discussion over at ABG turned quite constructive. Joe provided interesting links with 2010 data. So, the latest figure is 0.96 kWh per gallon of gasoline.

I replied to him with this:

Kudo to a nice and through research you did there. How did you get 550 g/kWh for 2010? I am finding 590 g/kWh (1.3 lbs/MWh) from eGrid 2010. That puts Leaf at 200 CO2 g/mile.

To be a true well-to-wheel analysis, you'll also need to add the CO2 generated from mining/drilling coal, natural gas, uranium and transporting them to the power plants. Those 3 sources make up 88% of the US electricity.

Oil refineries are located at the oil well so you already counted the CO2 from "pumping" the oil.​

 

Oil refineries are not floating in the gulf at every well head You may notice that we have a fleet of navel vessels that sometimes protects supertankers loaded with oil, and some of the political talk about a new oil pipeline to go along with some of those already built.

 

Not sure what you meant by that. Refineries are rarely if ever close to the well head. Most are located hundreds, if not thousands of miles away and are served by pipe lines (with pumping stations) or supertankers.

This is an incredibly complex scenario. Where do you stop calculating? What about all the worker's vehicles building the new pipelines serving the new wells being drilled via fracking? What about all the water trucks bringing water to the site? What about the electricity needed to produce that water? What about the environmental and electrical costs of producing the unknown chemicals used in the fracking?

Then, there's always the 800lb gorilla in the room: what about the costs of ensuing safe oil supplies and routes? How much CO2 does our military spew out?

 

Please give me a chance to check the numbers.
Earlier in this same thread, I reviewed similar/same references and presented the following:

So my number is lower, but I know one thing you guys like to do (that I do not like so much) is take all the elec (from diesel, lubes basically the whole product slate) and assign it all 100% to gasoline.

 

Yea, perhaps it is easier to just go with what EPA come up with. They added tailpipe & upstream GHG emission for gas cars and hybrids.

These estimates include CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide emitted from all steps in the use of a fuel, from production and refining to distribution and final use—vehicle manufacture is excluded. Methane and nitrous oxide emissions are converted into a CO2 equivalent.

The upstream GHG emission for electric miles are still "To Be Determined" but eGrid data is available.

If we use eGrid 2010 data, the Carbon dioxide equivalent (including methane and nitrous oxide) is 590 g/mile.

Leaf rated at 34kWh/100mi - 201 g/mi.

Prius rated at 2 gallons/100mi - 222 g/mi.

Volt rated at 36kWh/100mi - 212 g/mi using electricity and 299 g/mi using gasoline. Using 2/3 electric and 1/3 gas, the composite figure come out to 243 g/mi.

 

Seems reasonable USB. I also noticed some similar numbers to yours and a reasonably impartial discussion of advanatges/disadvantages of EV on this Wiki page:

Plug-in electric vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

USB- Not true, this guy above made a mistake in refinery gasoline production.
So 0.96 kWhr/gal above is incorrect and hereby DEBUNKED.
As always, if someone sees a problem with my analysis, pls advise.

USA Gaso should be about 9 millions barrels per day (x42 for gallons). This guy forgot to add in E10 refomulated gasoline, which goes out to blenders to get the ethanol E10. You have to look at "refinery + blenders" to get the whole amount of gasoline.

>>So I still like my number 0.16 kwhr/gallon crude oil input. Gasoline yield is approx 50% of the product, so if you must you can double my number to assign all elec purchase to gaso.

 

OK! I get it. Your number is electricity consumption per gallon of crude oil.

His number is flawed because he is attributing all the electricity consumption into gasoline, disregarding the other by-products.

Taking the E10 into account, 0.964 kWh/gal becomes 0.867 kWh/gal. The yield for the finished gasoline in 2010 is 45.7%. By taking account of the yield, it comes out to 0.396 kWh/gal of gas.

When you calculated the 0.16 kWh/gal, which data year did you use?

The grid electricity purchase in 2010 has gone up, mainly due to the Gulf Coast refineries.

It is probably better to use the average numbers rather than the 2010 snapshot.

 

USB- ...we are getting there!!

But the other fellow had made a really BIG mistake:
He said USA makes 3 million barrels but we really make 9 million barrels per day of gasoline (from 19 million barrels/day of crude).

>>So he had really meant to say 0.964 /3 = 0.32 kwhr per gal gasoline. The 0.964 is bogus math error. Use the 0.32 number.

>>Now, I was saying, that is really 0.457 x 0.32 = 0.15 kwhr per gallon of total refinery products (diesel etc). That is where your yield comes in.

Of course, the 0.15 kwhr/gal is a quite small number, which I was orginally suggesting, shows we do not need to worry about this number as a first approximation. Only for EV political spin, would anyone except DOE need to fiddle too much with these numbers.

 

After browsing through EIA site, I found out the refiners produced 3 million barrels per day. Blenders produced 6 millions.

Do the blenders get the petroleum by importing?

The electricity purchase was from refineries. Do the blenders count as refineries?

 

...apparently the "blenders" now take most of the gasoline from the refineries and blend in the ethanol for E10. Therefore you have to add up "refineries + blenders" to get total. There is some import/export but not a major portion and not sure how it nets out. So the mistake the other guy made was he neglected the blenders.

These "blenders" are in the news today because they are going to soon lose the ethanol subsidy they have been getting. I am guessing the blenders are not added to refinery elec.

 

Why is there so much fuss over "electricity" used. I've all but given up trying to see these formulas through. It's a fleeting number ... it's an amorphic number. The "how-much" value of a refinery's energy, has to include the "how-much energy does it take to make electricity" value ... which continually becomes more and more difficult to get ... as carbon based fossil fuel becomes more and more difficult to get. It's ever changing. Electricity isn't the only source of energy used to refine. Why not throw THOSE btu's into the mix. Discovery of new wells ... new oil fields actually peaked over 40 years ago. No amount of new oil field discoveries will ever make up for those losses. The acquisition of energy to make electricity (which in turn, makes a refinery run) gets more and more costly. Energy acquisition gets more and more costly in many different ways. Costly, comes in the form of military expenses ... blow back, due to military ... fracking expenses are not just the cost of drilling ... but the cost of the destruction of the landscape and ground water etc. But natural gas is the energy that makes some electricity - that in turn makes the refinery run. These are just the snow flakes that form the tip of the iceberg. All the energy needed to make other energy ... they're all inextricably linked.

.

 

The fuss occurs only because EV advocacy folks constantly bring up this number. Nissan/Leaf stopped quoting a number probably because they realized they were spreading a bad calc. I see no logical need to bring the (correct) number up for EV justification, but at this point the (incorrect) number is urban legend so its another whack-a-mole.