Refineries on the whole are 90.7 efficient, which is on the rise as the effect of energy price pressures and process improvements exceed the effect of the decreasing quality of crude we can pump from the ground. They draw 2% of the US total of electricity consumed (42TWh/yr), which I suppose would be equivalent in some ways to a city of 1.5m people. So, I could see how some greenies could conclude there are exactly six refineries in the United States.
Hi Matt -- Robert Llewellyn has been filming at a large UK refinery (he mentions this in the video), and he was told this by the manager of the refinery.
I'll be interested to hear the details, but I take the manager's word for it.
Refineries on the whole are 90.7 efficient, which is on the rise as the effect of energy price pressures and process improvements exceed the effect of the decreasing quality of crude we can pump from the ground. They draw 2% of the US total of electricity consumed (42TWh/yr), which I suppose would be equivalent in some ways to a city of 1.5m people. So, I could see how some greenies could conclude there are exactly six refineries in the United States.
I didn't see the figure of 42TWhr/year in the pdf that you posted so I'll just take your word for it.
US produces 8.923 million barrels of gas per day so it takes 12.9kWhr of electricity produce a barrel of gasoline.
The average household in US uses 936kWhr/month -> 11232kWhr/year and has 2.54 people. That means each person using on average 12.12 kWhr/day.
So a oil refinery that used as much electricity as 250k people would have a capacity of: 250k * 12.12 / 12.9 = 234k barrels/day.
The issue is that Llewellyn has developed a near-religious belief that shuttering refineries will by itself be sufficient to power a fleet of electric cars. I have not found data to support that thesis. In fact, I have provided sufficient data in other threads to refute it.
A city of 250k people has not just residences, but also industrial and commercial sectors which each make up about a third of the market. So assuming the rest of your math is fine, Llewellyn's refinery uses as much electricity as a city of 83000 people.
Similarly, a refinery doesn't just produce gasoline for personal transportation. They also provide non-energy products, as well as the fuel that powers agriculture, industry, freight, and most mass transit. Llywellyn doesn't appear to "get it".
They don't spell out what percentage of the energy content of the output is motor gasoline, but they do mention that 84.6% of the refinery outputs' energy content is distillate fuels, which to my mind is the first seven bolded items under "Refinery and Blender Net Production". So if you add up those seven items' energy content and divide the energy content of 3.1 billion bbl of gasoline into it, and multiply by .846, you'll get gasoline's share of the output.
Multiply that fraction by the 42TWh in from Table 1, and there you go.
I wonder if they add *all* the energy used by the refinery; for things like pumps, lights, secondary systems, etc. If they are basing it on the overall numbers of energy used by a refinery:
34kWh * 15.4% = 5.236kWh per gallon. Which is enough to drive 20 miles at 250Wh/mile or ~34.9 miles st 150Wh per mile. That's just the refining. If they are only adding the energy directly used in refining, then that is not accurate.
Let's not forget that if electricity is to be penalized for the losses to generate and for the grid, then the refinery has to add that embedded carbon into the gasoline. And the other stages of oil exploration, extraction, transportation, storage -- also add more energy, and each of those added energy have their own overhead of embedded energy, too.
34kWh * 15.4% = 5.236kWh per gallon. Which is enough to drive 20 miles at 250Wh/mile or ~34.9 miles st 150Wh per mile. That's just the refining. If they are only adding the energy directly used in refining, then that is not accurate.
No, no, no. 15.4% is the fraction that is "other than distillate fuels". You need to find the energy-weighted fraction of distillate fuels that is motor gasoline, then multiply that by .846*42TWh to get the purchased electricity assignable to gasoline.
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