Petroleum and why you might

be redneck
Petr- “rock”
Oleum - “oil”
 • It’s important to
conserve petroleum
resources
• But what is it made
A petri dish of light crude oil
of?
• Crude oils
underground have to
be processed

A blob of crude washed up onto a beach after

seeping out from underground 
• We separate the crude oil
by transporting it to
refineries

On oil tankers carrying

• Refined petroleum is a 4.1 mil barrels (140 bil
gallons) the crew uses
mix of hydrocarbons bikes to get around.
– Just H & C Cost around 1.4 bil to
make
 Cheapest way to
transport
• TransAlaskan
Pipeline 800 mile
– Prudhoe bay - Valdez
– Crosses mtn. ranges,
fault lines, permafrost
– Nixon authorized
– Oil travels warm
 Maintenance
• Can be surveyed by
air in ~2 hours
• Has been attacked
– 1978 explosion
• Forest fires,
earthquakes
• Used to be frequent
spills, less now
Pipeline on sliders where it crosses
Denali fault
 Signs you might be
a redneck

• 2001 drunken local

man Dan Lewis
– Shot hole in weld
– Leak ruined 2 football
fields of land,
– 10K fine, 10 years in
jail
– Cost 17 mil to clean up
– "I'll shoot it if I want. I'll
put a hole right
through it"
Plans for Alaskan Natural Gas Pipeline

• Could we pipe oil from Alaska to

Washington?
• 1977 Justice Berger’s report 
– From Vancouver
– 5 mil.
– 40K pages
– Political, social, and envi impact
– Conclusion: Probably shouldn’t, but wait ten
years.
 Today
• Should gov’t give Alaska & Canada money to
pay for such a pipeline?
• Political MESS. I mean MESS
• Indians have a big stake
• ExxonMobil, BP, and ConocoPhillips want it
• Texas Oil companies & ChevronTexaco don’t
want $ going to support gas from Canada So
Bush is against it.
• More gas, but aren’t we too dependant already?
• Burning petrol = ½ of U.S. E needs
• An avg. U.S. Car travels 14,000 miles/
year
• Heating and making electricity
• Raw Material for stuff

If both your dog and your wallet are on a chain…

 From your experience
What % of petrol is used for burning?
What % is used for raw materials?
• 89% of petrol is used as fuel
• 7% is used for products and medicines
• 4% lubricants, road-paving
• For every gallon used to make something
permanent and useful 5 gallons are
burned
Combustion rxns
• Burning hydrocarbons
means reacting them
with O2 and producing
carbon dioxide gas,
water vapor, and E
• These end up in Atm.
• It happens in your body
• Burnt hydrocarbons
are used up
• They take millions of
years to reform
• It’s a nonrenewable
resource
• We have about 5% of the world’s reserve
of oil but use 31%, Asia uses 27%, Europe
uses 19%
• The middle east has 66% of the reserves.
 Seperation by distillation
• If two mixed liquids have separate boiling
points you can separate them.
• Usually smaller molecules are easier to
boil.
• Dif. sizes of
hydrocarbons
boil at dif.
temps. and are
refined by
fractional
distillation
• 15 story
towers
• As the boiling vapors rise
they condense back into
liquid form as they cool
higher up
• The heaviest hydrocarbons
never boil,
– Called bottoms
– Petroleum jelly, and road
asphalt
Fractional distillation towers
L.A. refinery
• Last year there was a fire at the world’s
largest refinery
• Place employees 10s of thousands
• World’s largest refinery
– Venezuela 940,000 barrels
per day (bpd)
• Exxon owns one in Baytown
U.S. (pictured right)
– 557,000 bpd
• If your mother has “ammo”
on her Christmas list you
might be from texas
 Close by oil refineries
• In PA most refineries are by Philly
• Some are in top middle of state
• Historical One in Venango county 
• One in WV across the border from
Aliquippa right on the Ohio river
– 19,400 bpd
 Components of petrol
• Part’s of petroleum have boiling points
lower than 40o C.
– They only have 1-4 carbons
– Weak intermolecular forces.
– Used as heating fuels, plastics

• Gas, kerosene, oils

– 5-20 carbons
If you have ever been in a fight over a hunting dog…
• Carbon has 6
electrons
• 2 filling in first shell
• 4 valence open for
bonding
• Gives it versatility
• Typically covalent
bonds
– Sharing electrons
If you have ever stolen toilet paper…
 Alkanes
• A string of carbon atoms
each forming a single
covalent bond with 4
other atoms
• Methane is simplest
– Tetrahedron shape
• Branched chains are
possible
– Isomers – same formula
dif. shape
If you have ever shot an animal on a
golf course…
 Fuels and Climate
• Cold vs. hot means
dif. fuel consumption
• Transport, storage
issues
• What physical
property of
petroleum should
engineers consider
in this issue?
 PA and Petrol History
• Titusville, 1859 first U.S. oil
well
• Edwin Drake owned it 
• Boom Town
• At one time had more
millionares per K of people
than anywhere else

If you take a fishing pole into Sea World…

 Energy Trace
• Take anything, a paper clip
• What events took place to produce one
and get it into your hands?
• Where did the energy come from?
• Is the cost of paper clips related to the
materials used or the energy used?
• Take a new car.
 Fossil Fuels
• Petroleum, Natural Gas, Coal
• Carbon pressed from living matter in
ancient seas 500 mya
• Lots of potential E
• We transduce the chemical E into
movement, heat, light, sound
• Law of Conservation of E: energy is neither
created nor destroyed.
• No reaction is 100% perfect some E is lost
as heat. That’s why you’re 98.6
 Automobile E conversions
• What kind of energy change happens from
the gas tank to Engine Cylinder?
• Cylinder to Piston?
• Piston to Crankshaft?
• Crankshaft to Wheels?
 How do cars lose E
• Only 25% of the E in gas is converted to useable horse
power.
• The rest becomes heat we have to deal with
• Exhaust, engine frictions, cylinder cooling

• A car on the
free way
could
generate
enough
heat to fill 2
houses
1. intake/induction stroke
Gas/air mixture is sucked in
2. compression stroke
Mixture is compressed
3. power stroke
Mixture is ignited, expands
4. exhaust stroke
Burnt mixture is expelled
 Assignment
• Show the work for
determining how far
one family car drives
in a week.
• How many miles can
the car go on 1 gal?
• How much gas does
the car use in a year?
• If an avg. car uses 23 mpg and travels
14,000 miles a year…
– How much fuel is used in a year?
– If gas is 3.00 a gallon how much is spent?
– If gas increases 10 cents how much more is
spent?

– See http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bestworst.shtml
– See PetroleumFuelEconomy Worksheet
– Collect each classes mileage and award class with
lowest mpg
 Altering Fuels
– A barrel of crude is ~
18% gasoline
– It can be altered so
that its 47%
• Cracking
– Heat 16 C Kerosene to
600o and it breaks into
2, 8 C octanes.
– With a catalyst it’s only
500
– Catalytic Cracking Unit
(Cat) 
 Engine Knock
• Gas is straight chain alkanes
• Some times in the cylinder the
compressed gas blows from the pressure
before the spark plug ignites it.
• Piston bangs against crankshaft at wrong
time
• “pinging” or “knocking”
 To fix engine knock
• An isomer of octane
• 2,2,4-trimethylpentane or
isooctane for short is added
and it doesn’t ping at all
• Why do you think its called
2,2,4-trimethylpentane
 Octane Scale
• 100 is isooctane
• 0 is straight chain
heptane
• Researchers test
engines and engines
under a load (towing)
with dif. fuels to get
an octane rating.
• Usually 80s -90s
– An 80 rating gas has
the same knock as
80% isooctane 20%
heptane
 Thomas Midgely the Horrible
• Working for GM he
discovered tetraethyl lead
reduced engine know
– Improved octane rating by
3 or 4
– Lead is a neurotoxin and
bad for you
• Drove King George mad
– One of those things that
isn’t in nature normally, we
introduce a lot.
• They knew it was unhealthy but
• GM, Du Pont, and Standard Oil started
selling as much leaded gas as people
would buy.
– Workers at plants got poisoned
– Spokesman said, “They probably went insane
from working too hard.”

If you have trophies for winning spitting

contests…
• Midgely had been severely
poisoned
• Only handled the stuff when in front
of reporters.
• Midgely went on to make CFC’s
which caused the hole in the ozone
layer.
– Single organism whose had the
biggest impact
– Also from Beaver Falls
 Oxygenated fuels
• Replaced adding lead
• Deliver less E per gallon
• But increase octane number while
reducing pollutants
• More complete combustion, lower
emissions
• Methanol is a common additive
– Can be made from corn, grass, wood
– Saves oil
– 10 % ethanol 90% gas mixture: Gasohol
– AKA E10
– Viable energy alternative
– But how much E does it take to grow the
corn?
– Getting popular in tropical regions where its
easy to grow
– About ½ gas in U.S. Contains Ethanol
 E85
• 85% ethanol 15% gas
• Used in midwest and Minnesota
• 70 cents cheaper per gallon for cars that
can burn it.
• 27% less E per gallon but burns more
efficiently.
 MTBE
• Methyl tertiary-butyl ether
has an octane number of
116.
– Reduced air pollutants
– Was most common additive
in 90’s but
– Mixes easy with water
– Leakage from underground
storage contaminated
groundwater
– Bad taste & odor
– Smells like turpentine
– A spoonful would ruin a
swimming pool
 Diesel fuel
• Density 850 g/L Rudolf Diesel
• Gas 720 g/L
– 15% less
• Also releases 15% less Joules
• Easier to refine
• Pollutes more per unit, but burns
more efficiently so less polluting
over all
• Also more sulfur
• Laws for Diesel are
becoming more strict
• 6K gallons used during NEXTEL cup
• 216,000 gal during 2006 season
• A NASCAR Gets 3 mpg
• Unregulated by EPA
• What if rules
An organic farmer is going to hate Monsanto & the big farms.
And customers might not want GMO
changed?Other customers might want whatever is cheap.
 How long’s oil going to last
• Controversy!
• Idea of peak oil
(Hubbert, ’56), based
on production rates,
reserves and the
history of discovery
you can predict when
we’ll have found as
much oil as we’re
going to find.
– But which #’s to use?
– www.peakoil.net
 The Economic Hiroshima
• In ’56 Hubbert was able
to predict the oil shortage
of the 70’s
– Then Venezuala pushed up
production and we
bounced
• In ’74 he predicted ’95
would be another peak,
but in the 80’s we started
switching to sissy cars.

Daimler’s smart car

• After a well is ½ empty it takes more work (oil) to clean
it out.
– What happens when you use more oil to pump out less oil?
– Prices rise
Graph showing a variety of predictions of peak oil
• ’98 the King of Saudi
Arabia said, "The oil
Pessimism on
boom is over and will not Peaking
return... All of us must get
used to a different
lifestyle."
– Neat guy, ruled from 82 –
’95 when he had a stroke.
– Died 10 years later
• His 84 YEAR OLD bro
the new king
– 22 kids, 4 sons
– Our very good friends
– ¼ of the world’s oil is theirs
• Their Father the first
monarch of Saudi had 37
sons and ~ 25 daughters
~ 12-20 wives
 Pessimists

•Texas Oil Tycoon Boone

Pickens  said it peaked in
’05
•3 billionare
•117th richest in US
•Building US’s largest
wind farm in Texas
•2 ex wives, only 5 kids

•Association for Study of

Peak Oil said it’ll peak in ‘10
 Optimism
• Cambridge Energy Research
Associates Think
it’ll plateau
and stay plateau’d for
decades.
• Exxon execs’ think we’ve
got at least 25 years
• USDOEnergy: Production
is going up.
• OPEC hasn’t said
anything definite
 Cornucopian
• someone who
believes that
continued progress
and provision of
material items for
mankind can be met
by advances in
technology
• The horn of plenty
giveth.
 Hirsch report
Published Feb 05 For DOE Concludes….
•World oil peaking is going to happen, and will likely be abrupt.
•Oil peaking will adversely affect global economies, particularly those most dependent
on oil.
•Oil peaking presents a unique challenge (“it will be abrupt and revolutionary”).
•The problem is liquid fuels (growth in demand mainly from transportation sector).
•Mitigation efforts will require substantial time.
•20 years is required to transition without substantial impacts
•A 10 year rush transition with moderate impacts is possible with extraordinary
efforts from governments, industry, and consumers
•Late initiation of mitigation may result in severe consequences.
•Both supply and demand will require attention.
•It is a matter of risk management (mitigating action must come before the peak).
•Government intervention will be required.
•Economic upheaval is not inevitable (“given enough lead-time, the problems are soluble
with existing technologies.”)
•More information is needed to more precisely determine the peak timeframe.
 Scenarios
• Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking
crash program action leaves the world with a significant
liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 10 years before
world oil peaking helps considerably but still leaves a
liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade after the time that
oil would have peaked.
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 20 years before
peaking appears to offer the possibility of avoiding a
world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast period.
• Note a gallon gets you 44 miles in
Germany, 22 miles in the states
Size of an oil well