ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS

ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS
35 Comments by: Dan Maloney
October 18, 2021

When you're standing at the gas station filling up your car, watching those digits on the pump flip by can be a sobering experience. Fuel prices, especially the price of gasoline, have always been keenly watched, so it's hard to imagine a time when gasoline was a low-value waste product. But kerosene, sold mainly for lighting, was once king of the petroleum industry, at least before the automobile came along, to the extent that the gasoline produced while refining kerosene was simply dumped into streams to get rid of it.

The modern mind perhaps shudders at the thought of an environmental crime of that magnitude, and we can't imagine how anyone would think that was a good solution to the problem. And yet we now face much the same problem, as the increasing electrification of the world's fleet of motor vehicles pushes down gasoline demand. To understand why this is a problem, we'll start off by taking a look at how crude oil is formed, and how decreasing demand for gasoline may actually cause problems that we should think about before we get too far down the road.


PUT A LITTLE PLANKTON IN YOUR TANK
When you fill the gas tank in your ICE or hybrid vehicle and start the engine, you're closing a loop on chemical processes that started billions of years ago. The petrochemical fuel that powers most vehicles started as atmospheric carbon dioxide, greedily gobbled up by uncounted trillions of microscopic organisms like plankton, algae, and cyanobacteria via the process of photosynthesis, and locked into their biopolymers — lipids, carbohydrates, proteins, and nucleic acids.

These microorganisms multiplied fruitfully in the oceans and lakes of the primitive Earth, falling as sediment when they eventually died. The constant rain of death built thick layers of sediment, rich in organic molecules. Most of the carbon in these sediments decomposed via oxidation reactions, but in some areas, vast layers of the rich organic slime ended up covered by inorganic sediments thanks to geological processes. Locked away from the corrosive effects of oxygen and experiencing increasing heat and pressure thanks to the weight of the material on top of them, these partially decomposed sediments gradually transformed into kerogen, a deposit of organic material locked inside a sedimentary rock.

A sample of oil shale, a kerogen
Oil shale, a kerogen. Credit: Fafner, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
While kerogens are rich in large, complex hydrocarbons, and some are even rich enough to be used as fuel — coal is essentially a kerogen whose starting biomass was largely land-based plants — most kerogens don't fully convert into petroleum. Kerogens like the shale oil fields in North America are said to be "thermally immature" — basically, they haven't cooked enough. But other kerogens, ones that have deeper layers of sediment deposited on top of them, go through further geochemical reactions, breaking their complex hydrocarbons down into simpler and simpler compounds as time goes by, eventually forming vast pockets of liquid crude oil.

The most thermally mature products, the ones that have cooked the longest, are the short-chain gaseous hydrocarbons from the single-carbon methane to the four-carbon butane. On the other end of the thermal maturity spectrum, long-chain hydrocarbons, with perhaps 40 carbons or more in their chains, make up the thick, sticky asphalt compounds.

The hydrocarbons that are important in terms of motor fuels and lubricants tend to come from the middle of the thermal maturity range. Diesel, kerosene, and jet fuels tend to come from the C9 to C16 range, with longer carbon chains making up the heavy bunker oil used to fuel marine engines. On the shorter end, the C5 to C8 range hydrocarbons make up the bulk of gasoline, which is a complex blend of many different hydrocarbons, including straight-chain alkanes like hexane and octane, cycloalkanes, and any number of additives like ethers and alcohols, including ethanol.

This is the root of the gasoline problem. Right now, electric vehicles make up a tiny fraction of the total fleet — perhaps 3% worldwide. But at some point, through a combination of better engineering, political pressure, improved battery technology, and climate awareness, demand for electric vehicles is going to take off in a serious way. Some estimates peg the percentage of EVs on the road in 2040 at 58%, at least for passenger vehicles. That's a huge number of vehicles that won't be stopping by the local gas station to fill up every couple of days, meaning demand for gasoline will necessarily plummet.

But, as we've seen, about half of every barrel of crude oil is gasoline. If we suddenly don't need as much gasoline, the only way we can deal with the decreased demand is to not refine it from crude oil in the first place. That poses a problem if we still need any of the other fractions, which we likely will. Take diesel as an example. A 2019 report estimates that the medium and heavy truck fleet will only be about 4% electric by 2025, and that most of that will be trucks working local and regional delivery routes, mainly because of limitations in battery life. Long-haul trucks, though, will probably not be electrified for quite a while, meaning that crude oil will still have to be distilled to produce diesel to run them.

HarveyH55 wrote:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/18/electric-vehicles-the-gasoline-problem-and-synthetic-fuels-part-1/

ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS
35 Comments by: Dan Maloney
October 18, 2021

Longer article, need to click the link. Comments, as usual, are 'liberally' amusing.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Made the case, that we aren't going to leave crude oil in the ground anytime soon. About 50% of a barrel of crude, is fuel for transportation. We still need the other half for lubricants, and other things. I'm sure an alternate use will be found eventually, but that's a hell of a lot of waste product to deal with. Can't just burn it. Sort of defeats the purpose of actually using it for what it's really good at.

HarveyH55 wrote:

This is the root of the gasoline problem....*snip*

I really don't see 58% electric vehicles on the road by 2040. Gas cars last a long time. My 2003 Explorer is still going strong, almost 20 years old. With people switching to electric, likely I'll get a new model, cheap, and burn fossil fuels for another 20 or so years. If we are at only 3% electric right now, that's a whole lot of people needing to be convinced to change over in 20 years. Took some forcing, to get half of the population to 'voluntarily' get vaccinated against a plague, of biblical proportions. I don't think our drooling excuse for a 'president' has the testicles to even get it started.

Takes hours to charge a battery, every day or two. Only 5 minutes or so to fill a tank, each week. That's going to be a lot of demand on the electric grid, pretty much daily. Most people aren't going to drive, until the battery is mostly drained. Specially, if the can just plug it in at home. Cars are still going to take up the same parking space. Gas stations work, since a fill up only takes 5-10 minutes, quick turnover. If your battery is drained, it'll take an hour or more, to get a reasonable partial charge (not real good for the battery). You need to wait in line, just to plug in. A charging station, will still take up the same space, as a fuel pump. Who has hours, to wait? People will keep their batteries topped of at home, to avoid the wait.

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/18/electric-vehicles-the-gasoline-problem-and-synthetic-fuels-part-1/

ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS
35 Comments by: Dan Maloney
October 18, 2021

Longer article, need to click the link. Comments, as usual, are 'liberally' amusing.

There are lot of errors in this article. The guy is living in the past.

Refining used to be just simply filtering the hydrocarbons you got in the crude by size. Gasoline uses primarily heptanes and octanes (7 or 8 carbon atoms in the chain). Methane uses only one carbon atom in the 'chain'. The shorter the chain, the more the material tends to liquid and then gases. The longer the chain, the more the material tends to be thick and heavy, even becoming a solid.

Today, this process has been improved a lot. Since there are markets for each material produced, whether it's gasoline, kerosene, methane, butane, asphalt, or whatever, and those markets change, chemical processes have been developed to cut chains that are too long, or stitch chains that are not long enough into larger chains.

The result of these is a far better yield of the desired products. We don't have to 'discard' (actually we sell it on the international market) so much of it. In other words, if we don't want to use it, someone else in the world will probably buy it. Essentially, almost all of it gets used. We don't have to waste so much like the old days.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Made the case, that we aren't going to leave crude oil in the ground anytime soon. About 50% of a barrel of crude, is fuel for transportation. We still need the other half for lubricants, and other things. I'm sure an alternate use will be found eventually, but that's a hell of a lot of waste product to deal with. Can't just burn it. Sort of defeats the purpose of actually using it for what it's really good at.

As I said... there really isn't a lot of waste product.

HarveyH55 wrote:

This is the root of the gasoline problem....*snip*

I really don't see 58% electric vehicles on the road by 2040. Gas cars last a long time. My 2003 Explorer is still going strong, almost 20 years old. With people switching to electric, likely I'll get a new model, cheap, and burn fossil fuels for another 20 or so years. If we are at only 3% electric right now, that's a whole lot of people needing to be convinced to change over in 20 years. Took some forcing, to get half of the population to 'voluntarily' get vaccinated against a plague, of biblical proportions. I don't think our drooling excuse for a 'president' has the testicles to even get it started.

Takes hours to charge a battery, every day or two. Only 5 minutes or so to fill a tank, each week. That's going to be a lot of demand on the electric grid, pretty much daily. Most people aren't going to drive, until the battery is mostly drained. Specially, if the can just plug it in at home. Cars are still going to take up the same parking space. Gas stations work, since a fill up only takes 5-10 minutes, quick turnover. If your battery is drained, it'll take an hour or more, to get a reasonable partial charge (not real good for the battery). You need to wait in line, just to plug in. A charging station, will still take up the same space, as a fuel pump. Who has hours, to wait? People will keep their batteries topped of at home, to avoid the wait.

Fueling a gasoline (or diesel) car from an empty tank to full takes about five minutes.
Recharging an electric car battery from fully drained to fully charged takes about six to eight hours (depending on the battery and the charging system used).

That's AFTER you get done waiting in line for the charging station. If everyone drove electric cars (HAR!) the lines at the charging stations would look worse than Carter's price control lines for gasoline.

Charging stations would have to be more than just charging stations. They would have to be motels.

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/18/electric-vehicles-the-gasoline-problem-and-synthetic-fuels-part-1/

ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS
35 Comments by: Dan Maloney
October 18, 2021

Longer article, need to click the link. Comments, as usual, are 'liberally' amusing.

There are lot of errors in this article. The guy is living in the past.

Refining used to be just simply filtering the hydrocarbons you got in the crude by size. Gasoline uses primarily heptanes and octanes (7 or 8 carbon atoms in the chain). Methane uses only one carbon atom in the 'chain'. The shorter the chain, the more the material tends to liquid and then gases. The longer the chain, the more the material tends to be thick and heavy, even becoming a solid.

Today, this process has been improved a lot. Since there are markets for each material produced, whether it's gasoline, kerosene, methane, butane, asphalt, or whatever, and those markets change, chemical processes have been developed to cut chains that are too long, or stitch chains that are not long enough into larger chains.

The result of these is a far better yield of the desired products. We don't have to 'discard' (actually we sell it on the international market) so much of it. In other words, if we don't want to use it, someone else in the world will probably buy it. Essentially, almost all of it gets used. We don't have to waste so much like the old days.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Made the case, that we aren't going to leave crude oil in the ground anytime soon. About 50% of a barrel of crude, is fuel for transportation. We still need the other half for lubricants, and other things. I'm sure an alternate use will be found eventually, but that's a hell of a lot of waste product to deal with. Can't just burn it. Sort of defeats the purpose of actually using it for what it's really good at.

As I said... there really isn't a lot of waste product.

HarveyH55 wrote:

This is the root of the gasoline problem....*snip*

I really don't see 58% electric vehicles on the road by 2040. Gas cars last a long time. My 2003 Explorer is still going strong, almost 20 years old. With people switching to electric, likely I'll get a new model, cheap, and burn fossil fuels for another 20 or so years. If we are at only 3% electric right now, that's a whole lot of people needing to be convinced to change over in 20 years. Took some forcing, to get half of the population to 'voluntarily' get vaccinated against a plague, of biblical proportions. I don't think our drooling excuse for a 'president' has the testicles to even get it started.

Takes hours to charge a battery, every day or two. Only 5 minutes or so to fill a tank, each week. That's going to be a lot of demand on the electric grid, pretty much daily. Most people aren't going to drive, until the battery is mostly drained. Specially, if the can just plug it in at home. Cars are still going to take up the same parking space. Gas stations work, since a fill up only takes 5-10 minutes, quick turnover. If your battery is drained, it'll take an hour or more, to get a reasonable partial charge (not real good for the battery). You need to wait in line, just to plug in. A charging station, will still take up the same space, as a fuel pump. Who has hours, to wait? People will keep their batteries topped of at home, to avoid the wait.

Fueling a gasoline (or diesel) car from an empty tank to full takes about five minutes.
Recharging an electric car battery from fully drained to fully charged takes about six to eight hours (depending on the battery and the charging system used).

That's AFTER you get done waiting in line for the charging station. If everyone drove electric cars (HAR!) the lines at the charging stations would look worse than Carter's price control lines for gasoline.

Charging stations would have to be more than just charging stations. They would have to be motels.

Been ready about a Fast Charging option for a while, though never bothered to look into the details. Fast Charging is a battery killer for most chemistries I've ever worked with. You don't even think about abusing a battery pack that costs $80 to replace. Not to mention the fail fast, which isn't good for a drone in the air...

Into the Night wrote:You will never be able to charge a battery with this kind of power in a few minutes.

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/18/electric-vehicles-the-gasoline-problem-and-synthetic-fuels-part-1/

ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS
35 Comments by: Dan Maloney
October 18, 2021

Longer article, need to click the link. Comments, as usual, are 'liberally' amusing.

There are lot of errors in this article. The guy is living in the past.

Refining used to be just simply filtering the hydrocarbons you got in the crude by size. Gasoline uses primarily heptanes and octanes (7 or 8 carbon atoms in the chain). Methane uses only one carbon atom in the 'chain'. The shorter the chain, the more the material tends to liquid and then gases. The longer the chain, the more the material tends to be thick and heavy, even becoming a solid.

Today, this process has been improved a lot. Since there are markets for each material produced, whether it's gasoline, kerosene, methane, butane, asphalt, or whatever, and those markets change, chemical processes have been developed to cut chains that are too long, or stitch chains that are not long enough into larger chains.

The result of these is a far better yield of the desired products. We don't have to 'discard' (actually we sell it on the international market) so much of it. In other words, if we don't want to use it, someone else in the world will probably buy it. Essentially, almost all of it gets used. We don't have to waste so much like the old days.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Made the case, that we aren't going to leave crude oil in the ground anytime soon. About 50% of a barrel of crude, is fuel for transportation. We still need the other half for lubricants, and other things. I'm sure an alternate use will be found eventually, but that's a hell of a lot of waste product to deal with. Can't just burn it. Sort of defeats the purpose of actually using it for what it's really good at.

As I said... there really isn't a lot of waste product.

HarveyH55 wrote:

This is the root of the gasoline problem....*snip*

I really don't see 58% electric vehicles on the road by 2040. Gas cars last a long time. My 2003 Explorer is still going strong, almost 20 years old. With people switching to electric, likely I'll get a new model, cheap, and burn fossil fuels for another 20 or so years. If we are at only 3% electric right now, that's a whole lot of people needing to be convinced to change over in 20 years. Took some forcing, to get half of the population to 'voluntarily' get vaccinated against a plague, of biblical proportions. I don't think our drooling excuse for a 'president' has the testicles to even get it started.

Takes hours to charge a battery, every day or two. Only 5 minutes or so to fill a tank, each week. That's going to be a lot of demand on the electric grid, pretty much daily. Most people aren't going to drive, until the battery is mostly drained. Specially, if the can just plug it in at home. Cars are still going to take up the same parking space. Gas stations work, since a fill up only takes 5-10 minutes, quick turnover. If your battery is drained, it'll take an hour or more, to get a reasonable partial charge (not real good for the battery). You need to wait in line, just to plug in. A charging station, will still take up the same space, as a fuel pump. Who has hours, to wait? People will keep their batteries topped of at home, to avoid the wait.

Fueling a gasoline (or diesel) car from an empty tank to full takes about five minutes.
Recharging an electric car battery from fully drained to fully charged takes about six to eight hours (depending on the battery and the charging system used).

That's AFTER you get done waiting in line for the charging station. If everyone drove electric cars (HAR!) the lines at the charging stations would look worse than Carter's price control lines for gasoline.

Charging stations would have to be more than just charging stations. They would have to be motels.

Been ready about a Fast Charging option for a while, though never bothered to look into the details. Fast Charging is a battery killer for most chemistries I've ever worked with. You don't even think about abusing a battery pack that costs $80 to replace. Not to mention the fail fast, which isn't good for a drone in the air...

You will never be able to charge a battery with this kind of power in a few minutes.
The current required will be so high you would have to use a conductor so thick you couldn't lift it.

That's ignoring the internal resistance of the battery (which all batteries have), nor the heat generated by charging.

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:You will never be able to charge a battery with this kind of power in a few minutes.

I think that if you position your car just right during a lightning storm, you could get a very quick charge.

.

duncan61 wrote:
Even the Milwaukee battries I use for my drills and stuff wear down with charging.The origional little 12V I have had for 10 years is relegated to the radio and only goes for 5-6 hours.The new one I have will run for 3 days but I keep that one for the angle drill I have.Is it safe to assume every time you charge your car it loses a bit of storage until it will barely get you to the local shop.Hybrids are brilliant.

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:

Into the Night wrote:

HarveyH55 wrote:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/18/electric-vehicles-the-gasoline-problem-and-synthetic-fuels-part-1/

ELECTRIC VEHICLES, THE GASOLINE PROBLEM, AND SYNTHETIC FUELS
35 Comments by: Dan Maloney
October 18, 2021

Longer article, need to click the link. Comments, as usual, are 'liberally' amusing.

There are lot of errors in this article. The guy is living in the past.

Refining used to be just simply filtering the hydrocarbons you got in the crude by size. Gasoline uses primarily heptanes and octanes (7 or 8 carbon atoms in the chain). Methane uses only one carbon atom in the 'chain'. The shorter the chain, the more the material tends to liquid and then gases. The longer the chain, the more the material tends to be thick and heavy, even becoming a solid.

Today, this process has been improved a lot. Since there are markets for each material produced, whether it's gasoline, kerosene, methane, butane, asphalt, or whatever, and those markets change, chemical processes have been developed to cut chains that are too long, or stitch chains that are not long enough into larger chains.

The result of these is a far better yield of the desired products. We don't have to 'discard' (actually we sell it on the international market) so much of it. In other words, if we don't want to use it, someone else in the world will probably buy it. Essentially, almost all of it gets used. We don't have to waste so much like the old days.

HarveyH55 wrote:
Made the case, that we aren't going to leave crude oil in the ground anytime soon. About 50% of a barrel of crude, is fuel for transportation. We still need the other half for lubricants, and other things. I'm sure an alternate use will be found eventually, but that's a hell of a lot of waste product to deal with. Can't just burn it. Sort of defeats the purpose of actually using it for what it's really good at.

As I said... there really isn't a lot of waste product.

HarveyH55 wrote:

This is the root of the gasoline problem....*snip*

I really don't see 58% electric vehicles on the road by 2040. Gas cars last a long time. My 2003 Explorer is still going strong, almost 20 years old. With people switching to electric, likely I'll get a new model, cheap, and burn fossil fuels for another 20 or so years. If we are at only 3% electric right now, that's a whole lot of people needing to be convinced to change over in 20 years. Took some forcing, to get half of the population to 'voluntarily' get vaccinated against a plague, of biblical proportions. I don't think our drooling excuse for a 'president' has the testicles to even get it started.

Takes hours to charge a battery, every day or two. Only 5 minutes or so to fill a tank, each week. That's going to be a lot of demand on the electric grid, pretty much daily. Most people aren't going to drive, until the battery is mostly drained. Specially, if the can just plug it in at home. Cars are still going to take up the same parking space. Gas stations work, since a fill up only takes 5-10 minutes, quick turnover. If your battery is drained, it'll take an hour or more, to get a reasonable partial charge (not real good for the battery). You need to wait in line, just to plug in. A charging station, will still take up the same space, as a fuel pump. Who has hours, to wait? People will keep their batteries topped of at home, to avoid the wait.

Fueling a gasoline (or diesel) car from an empty tank to full takes about five minutes.
Recharging an electric car battery from fully drained to fully charged takes about six to eight hours (depending on the battery and the charging system used).

That's AFTER you get done waiting in line for the charging station. If everyone drove electric cars (HAR!) the lines at the charging stations would look worse than Carter's price control lines for gasoline.

Charging stations would have to be more than just charging stations. They would have to be motels.

Been ready about a Fast Charging option for a while, though never bothered to look into the details. Fast Charging is a battery killer for most chemistries I've ever worked with. You don't even think about abusing a battery pack that costs $80 to replace. Not to mention the fail fast, which isn't good for a drone in the air...

You will never be able to charge a battery with this kind of power in a few minutes.
The current required will be so high you would have to use a conductor so thick you couldn't lift it.

That's ignoring the internal resistance of the battery (which all batteries have), nor the heat generated by charging.

I got the impression that the fast charge, can take a fully depleted battery to full charge, in 1-2 hours, instead of 6 hours. I've never been curious enough to look into it further. You pay a premium for convenience.

Into the Night wrote:Heh. Nice try! Lightning, of course will just arc across the terminals of what's left of the battery. Before it does, however, the voltage pulse will destroy the battery.

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:Heh. Nice try! Lightning, of course will just arc across the terminals of what's left of the battery. Before it does, however, the voltage pulse will destroy the battery.

... but it will be fully charged ... and will serve as a lovely hand-warmer ... for a while at least.

.

Into the Night wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:Heh. Nice try! Lightning, of course will just arc across the terminals of what's left of the battery. Before it does, however, the voltage pulse will destroy the battery.

... but it will be fully charged ... and will serve as a lovely hand-warmer ... for a while at least.

.

Bring the marshmallows!

Nothing like a cookout on a LiO battery fire!

Into the Night wrote:

IBdaMann wrote:

Into the Night wrote:Before it does, however, the voltage pulse will destroy the battery.

... but it will be fully charged ... and will serve as a lovely hand-warmer ... for a while at least.

Bring the marshmallows! Nothing like a cookout on a LiO battery fire!