Completely missing from your musings is that these things could be dropping due to electrification and efficiency improvements. Engine efficiencies have had a drastic improvement since the late 00s.
In addition, electrification of freight is starting to happen at scale and will make large inroads of displacement as freight makes up nearly 80% of diesel usage.
QUESTION: WHY jet fuel and diesel increasingly come from heavier crude (your paragraph [6])? Aviation fuel is almost completely in short-chain carbohydrates. Intuitively, their best source is the lighter crude. (1) Did you mean lighter crude is in short supply? (2) Did you mean due to the constant needs of jet fuel and diesel (at least for the part due to 40 years of near constant international trade), more and more of the refinery "residue" after jet fuel and diesel extraction is heavy bunker oil? (3) Due to geopolitical reasons, the better sources for jet fuel and diesel are gradually outside of the US "access" ? Please elaborate.
Side note: The design of the next generation US army tanks has abandoned gas-turbine (which requires high-grade gasoline, nearly jet fuel grade) and gone to diesel (the traditional Russian and European choice). Maybe they sensed a "relative" shortage in future gasoline suport.
This essay has shown me how our world can indeed be self-organizing. It's a little alarming, like riding in a car with no driver. When businesses respond to price signals which are themselves the result of physical constraints, and every factor is busy affecting every other factor, well there you have it: the fabric of society undulating in the winds of change all by itself. We can tweak things here and there but without being able to understand fully the consequences we are stimulating. It does seem like the best bet is to align with a higher power, the source of order in all this, since we are by ourselves blind and helpless.
This sources says that sulfur is an essential element for plant growth. Sulfur is used in fertilizers. It also can be used to control fungal infections and pests.
Sulfur has many other uses in industry. Rubber and plastics, medicine, explosives, are a few.
Believe it or not, sulfur in diesel fuel helps the engine run better, but it also pollutes that air and leads to acid rain. So legislation was passed to require low sulfur fuel.
More than 30 years ago, I worked in a refinery that ran on heavy, high-sulfur crude. The refinery had been designed for such crude and incorporated a very large still, 4 cokers, massive units to get the sulfur out, and a fluid cracler. It could not run efficiently on anything else, and the crude it used could not be processed by refineries designed for light sweet crude. Trucks came by several times a week to take the sulfur away.
Thanks for pointing this out. California has been producing high sulfur heavy crude for a long time in the Kern River area. The trucks taking the sulfur away use diesel, I am sure.
Somehow, energy is needed to keep the refinery operating. As I understand it, this energy is usually electricity that needs to be operating 24/7/365 without outages. Oil is rarely used directly in producing this energy. In California, I would expect that this electricity would be hydroelectric imported from the state of Washington, natural gas, nuclear (at least in the past), and perhaps some wind and solar, if enough of other fuels are available to balance them out so that 24/7/365 can be achieved.
There also has to be a huge amount of electricity transmission put into place, and heated pipelines to transport the heavy oil. This requires lots of metals, diesel, and electricity. If upkeep is too low, electricity lines can cause fires to take place, an indirect problem.
I have a problem with EROEI measurements that don't take into account the real inputs going into the system.
Some oil is burned in a refinery. Fluid crackers spray 700 deg oil that is much like vaseline on much hotter Zoliet sand. This breaks the long chains into shorter ones. gasoline range and jet fuel, leaving carbon on the sand. They blow air through the sand to burn off the carbon and make steam. The crackers run 5 years or more between shutdowns. At 12-14 stories tall, crackers are impressive.
I don't think refrigerators draw much electrical power relative to the energy in the oil.
Brillaint breakdown of how diesel shortages drive deglobalization. The musical chairs analogy captures it perfectly, especially watching countreis scramble. I work in logistics and seeing how tight shale added gasoline but not enough diesel totally fits what we're experiencing on teh ground. Prices can't rise enough to fix it bc food costs spike fast.
As I have discussed with Gale, there is a way to make diesel or jet fuel out of trash and solar electricity. It is based on a reaction from the Victorian age, where they made town gas from coal and steam. The process burned much of the coal for heat. The idea is to use electrical heat to gasify trash in steam. This makes syngas, which can be converted to diesel. LA makes enough trash to supply LAX with all the sustainable jet fuel it needs.
I think Germans did this extensively during WW2. Me 262 in late-war period was powered entirely by such synthetic fuel. In addition to coal and steam, I think a high-pressure reaction chamber is also necessary.
Right on the Germans making fuel this way out of coal. More recently, South Africa was doing the same, and even more recently, Sasol has been making diesel out of natural gas. They make 3400 bbl/day, which is close to what could be made from LA's trash.
Eventually, humans are going to have to live on renewable energy and biomass.
Investment is needed for this to work. There are a lot of details that would need to be worked out. Probably a small model system would need to be developed first to test on a small scale how the proposed method would work.
Unfortunately, this project does not scale down gracefully. There isn't any point in 100-ton-per-day demos since those have been working for a decade or longer. They use plasma torches, which don't scale up for beans. The pilot (designed with AI) ranges from 1% to 2.5% of LA trash. That's a thousand to 2500 t/d gasifier. Does anyone want to lead this project?
Completely missing from your musings is that these things could be dropping due to electrification and efficiency improvements. Engine efficiencies have had a drastic improvement since the late 00s.
In addition, electrification of freight is starting to happen at scale and will make large inroads of displacement as freight makes up nearly 80% of diesel usage.
QUESTION: WHY jet fuel and diesel increasingly come from heavier crude (your paragraph [6])? Aviation fuel is almost completely in short-chain carbohydrates. Intuitively, their best source is the lighter crude. (1) Did you mean lighter crude is in short supply? (2) Did you mean due to the constant needs of jet fuel and diesel (at least for the part due to 40 years of near constant international trade), more and more of the refinery "residue" after jet fuel and diesel extraction is heavy bunker oil? (3) Due to geopolitical reasons, the better sources for jet fuel and diesel are gradually outside of the US "access" ? Please elaborate.
Side note: The design of the next generation US army tanks has abandoned gas-turbine (which requires high-grade gasoline, nearly jet fuel grade) and gone to diesel (the traditional Russian and European choice). Maybe they sensed a "relative" shortage in future gasoline suport.
The “self-organizing economy” if based on infinite growth on a finite planet is still subject to the same problems and limits of the current economy.
Use of renewable resources at faster than they renew will bring down an economy on a finite world.
If resources don't renew, or renew at a tiny rate, it is extremely easy to bring down the economy. A bucket of sand can be emptied with a teaspoon.
This essay has shown me how our world can indeed be self-organizing. It's a little alarming, like riding in a car with no driver. When businesses respond to price signals which are themselves the result of physical constraints, and every factor is busy affecting every other factor, well there you have it: the fabric of society undulating in the winds of change all by itself. We can tweak things here and there but without being able to understand fully the consequences we are stimulating. It does seem like the best bet is to align with a higher power, the source of order in all this, since we are by ourselves blind and helpless.
Gail’s thesis has consistently been:
We have an economy adapted to low cost energy.
Energy availability and price are under pressure due to geology, geopolitics, and global debt leverage.
When an organized system loses its support, it collapses to a level that can be supported by available resources.
This analysis is the latest supporting evidence for her thesis.
The consequences of this thesis are sobering.
I agree. Overshoot and collapse has been a sad story throughout history. This is a story from the 1300s that I ran across today.
https://www.thecollector.com/danse-macabre-middle-ages-danse-of-death/
I wonder where all of that sulfur went?
Sulfur is surprisingly useful:
https://www.howengineeringworks.com/questions/what-are-uses-of-sulfur/#google_vignette
This sources says that sulfur is an essential element for plant growth. Sulfur is used in fertilizers. It also can be used to control fungal infections and pests.
Sulfur has many other uses in industry. Rubber and plastics, medicine, explosives, are a few.
Believe it or not, sulfur in diesel fuel helps the engine run better, but it also pollutes that air and leads to acid rain. So legislation was passed to require low sulfur fuel.
Thank you! So much to learn. I’ve been following your work since I first heard your interview with Nate Hagens. Really appreciate your work!
More than 30 years ago, I worked in a refinery that ran on heavy, high-sulfur crude. The refinery had been designed for such crude and incorporated a very large still, 4 cokers, massive units to get the sulfur out, and a fluid cracler. It could not run efficiently on anything else, and the crude it used could not be processed by refineries designed for light sweet crude. Trucks came by several times a week to take the sulfur away.
Thanks for pointing this out. California has been producing high sulfur heavy crude for a long time in the Kern River area. The trucks taking the sulfur away use diesel, I am sure.
Somehow, energy is needed to keep the refinery operating. As I understand it, this energy is usually electricity that needs to be operating 24/7/365 without outages. Oil is rarely used directly in producing this energy. In California, I would expect that this electricity would be hydroelectric imported from the state of Washington, natural gas, nuclear (at least in the past), and perhaps some wind and solar, if enough of other fuels are available to balance them out so that 24/7/365 can be achieved.
There also has to be a huge amount of electricity transmission put into place, and heated pipelines to transport the heavy oil. This requires lots of metals, diesel, and electricity. If upkeep is too low, electricity lines can cause fires to take place, an indirect problem.
I have a problem with EROEI measurements that don't take into account the real inputs going into the system.
Some oil is burned in a refinery. Fluid crackers spray 700 deg oil that is much like vaseline on much hotter Zoliet sand. This breaks the long chains into shorter ones. gasoline range and jet fuel, leaving carbon on the sand. They blow air through the sand to burn off the carbon and make steam. The crackers run 5 years or more between shutdowns. At 12-14 stories tall, crackers are impressive.
I don't think refrigerators draw much electrical power relative to the energy in the oil.
Thank You Gail. I will include this in my next blog post. People need reminding a lot about this.
Thanks, John!
Brillaint breakdown of how diesel shortages drive deglobalization. The musical chairs analogy captures it perfectly, especially watching countreis scramble. I work in logistics and seeing how tight shale added gasoline but not enough diesel totally fits what we're experiencing on teh ground. Prices can't rise enough to fix it bc food costs spike fast.
I very much agree! Thanks for your support.
As I have discussed with Gale, there is a way to make diesel or jet fuel out of trash and solar electricity. It is based on a reaction from the Victorian age, where they made town gas from coal and steam. The process burned much of the coal for heat. The idea is to use electrical heat to gasify trash in steam. This makes syngas, which can be converted to diesel. LA makes enough trash to supply LAX with all the sustainable jet fuel it needs.
I think Germans did this extensively during WW2. Me 262 in late-war period was powered entirely by such synthetic fuel. In addition to coal and steam, I think a high-pressure reaction chamber is also necessary.
Right on the Germans making fuel this way out of coal. More recently, South Africa was doing the same, and even more recently, Sasol has been making diesel out of natural gas. They make 3400 bbl/day, which is close to what could be made from LA's trash.
Eventually, humans are going to have to live on renewable energy and biomass.
Investment is needed for this to work. There are a lot of details that would need to be worked out. Probably a small model system would need to be developed first to test on a small scale how the proposed method would work.
Unfortunately, this project does not scale down gracefully. There isn't any point in 100-ton-per-day demos since those have been working for a decade or longer. They use plasma torches, which don't scale up for beans. The pilot (designed with AI) ranges from 1% to 2.5% of LA trash. That's a thousand to 2500 t/d gasifier. Does anyone want to lead this project?