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Posted by chmaynard 18 hours ago

How an oil refinery works(www.construction-physics.com)
388 points | 119 commentspage 3
gosub100 8 hours ago|
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

arlobish 16 hours ago||
Cool to see how when people talk about “transitioning off oil” it's more than replacing gasoline in cars. It's replacing this entire global machine.
advisedwang 15 hours ago||
Cars are the most familiar to the everyday user, which is why it's the most common in perception. It's also actually one of the easier ones to solve (ie it's basically done).

Trucking is technically not to hard but logistically difficult. Aviation is extremely technically challenging. Shipping is economically difficult. Electricity generation has lots of factors, there's a lot of generation that can and has been changed easily, but some generation which is harder to switch.

If you get outside of oil into CO2 generally, there's even thornier issues. Concrete production, for example.

If you are seriously interested in these issues, I highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/c/EngineeringwithRosie

gpm 15 hours ago|||
It's not just gasoline, but a lot of it is gasoline

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/307194/top-oil-consuming...

tmellon2 16 hours ago||
Oil is cooked. BYD is filing 52 patents every single day and has a 700 km in 9 minutes vehicle available TODAY ! Charging by Solar is going to be the norm. Watch : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgCYYrhL-kE
ufmace 12 hours ago|||
You seem to be copy-pasting this around this thread a lot, what's the deal with that?

I would agree that electric is the future, but even if all that works as advertised and we keep making more progress, it's still going to take decades to manufacture the billions of them that will be needed to seriously displace oil. I believe oil will continue to be necessary and relevant for the lifetime of everybody old enough to write posts on this thread.

throw0101c 16 hours ago|||
> Oil is cooked. BYD is […]

By "vehicles" do you mean "cars"?

Because airplanes are also a type of vehicles. So are container ships. Neither of which are very practicable with pure electric AFAICT, and are integral to modern life. (Though more marine hybrid could be practical.)

I think there should be more of a push for BEV/hybrid cars (and transport trucks), and think more home electrification would be good (though air sealing and insulation are more important, relatively speaking). But let us set reasonable expectations of what is possible at various timeframes (and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good/better).

testing22321 13 hours ago||
> Neither of which are very practicable with pure electric

Yet.

The surge in electric cars is a driving force for new tech - higher energy density batteries, faster charge rates, longer life, etc etc.

For shipping it’s only a matter of when.

Planes are harder, but just today electric choppers started flying in NYC. It’s coming.

throw0101c 11 hours ago|||
I'm not against hoping that things will improve, but there's a lot of handwaving here, and an indeterminate path to "oil is cooked".

Remember that oil/petroleum is used in things like plastics, fertilizer, lubrication, non-natural-rubber seals/gaskets, LNG extraction has helium extraction has a by-product.

Reduction in oil-for-transportation can be reduced (thus reducing climate change effects), with oil-for-other-things still being a thing.

richwater 11 hours ago|||
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phplovesong 11 hours ago||
* Ukraine has entered the chat *
tmellon2 16 hours ago|
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