BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: pdq
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 03:34 PM

Not unusual to see a serious topic fracture into 15 more/less related topics, but that's Mudcat...

Pied Piper asked "...how long it takes the CO2 produced by burning hydrocarbons to be sequestered back as hydrocarbons and Carbonate rocks"(?)

ans: It probably doesn't matter. The shear size of planet Earth will enable us to utilize oil and natural gas until mankind dies out. That will not come from the usual model presented for global warming. The CO2 is largely consumed by plants which convert it back to O2, more/less the reverse of the burning process that created CO2 and water. Here is a real danger: as the Earth's population soars, trees are cut down and land becomes covered by houses, schools, public buildings and roads. Result is that CO2 formation exceeds the ability of the remaining plant to convert it back to O2.

Again from PP: "The point about Bio fuels is that the Carbon cycle time is very short (a few years tops) oil takes millions of years to form or if it's "exuded" from non-organic sources of Carbon then the cycle time is infinite! "

ans: Not exactly. The oil and gas being produced are very deep. The Earth's core is a molten, super-heated mass and the ingredients of the fuel are being pushed outward toward the Earth's surface. It probably travels as gas, maybe as liquid. Carbon-containing rocks near the surface have little to do with the process. Also, the material we can reach started it's journey long ago, maybe millions of years.

By the way, If you are willing to drill a 40,000 foot deep oil well, you can probably do so on any piece of land on the planet and find a significant amount of oil.

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Peace
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 03:40 PM

Re plants and CO2 use, and then the O2 producers.

The atmospheric percent of O2 has been at 21% for what seems like ever. Why is that since we're killing off the Amazon rainforest and polluting the hell out of our oceans and thus killing O2 producers?

Something ain't right about this stuff still being right if you know what I mean.

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: GUEST,clogger
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 03:43 PM

Just read (in New Scientist) there is a possible fuel in the form of METAL! Apparently you just break it down to the correct size particles and you can burn it in a "conventional" engine. The burnt particles can even be saved and converted into "new" fuel.
Bit like a nuculear fast reactor without all the drawbacks.
I even think I can hear the corporate knees shakeing over at Shell ...... or not

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: pdq
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 04:18 PM

Peace (in our time) asks: "The atmospheric percent of O2 has been at 21% for what seems like ever. Why is that since we're killing off the Amazon rainforest and polluting the hell out of our oceans and thus killing O2 producers?'

ans: The best O2 conversion areas are coastal marsh lands, not open oceans. Actually, most of the crap we dump into the oceans in broken down by microbes. The solid material falls to the bottom where very little (if any) life exists. As to the Amazon rain forest, it has been under attack for at least 400 years and yet only 5-7% is gone. This is in direct conflict with the opinion of some Environmentalists who have been saying "15% of the world's rain forests are destroyed each year"(!) That just ain't true.

Don't get me wrong. I hate pollution, polluters and habitat destruction. I have the same feeling when it comes to propagandists and other professional liars.

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 08:46 PM

mg - killing many birds with a single stone is no longer politically ecologically correct... ;-P

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Kaleea
Date: 31 Oct 05 - 11:56 PM

Some of my ancestors used to burn Bison "chips" (they were dried out & found on the prairies) as fuel for heating & cooking. When they said every part of the "Buffalo" was used, they meant it! --I have sat at a campfire where "Buffalo" chips were tossed on the fire. Gives a new meaning to ". . . a churnin' urn of burnin' funk."

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Peace
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 01:54 PM

Some of my ancestors used to burn Bison "chips"

Some of mine, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 03:38 PM

Peace's question has not really been answered. The model that says oil deposits are primarily composed of decomposed organic matter has a certain amount of inertia (it's been around since 1910 or so). That's why they are called fossil fuels.

The counter argument is that geological processes continue to create oil elements which build up in deposits in an on-going cycle, drawing on the heat and forces deep under the surface of the planet.

There is a fairly simple approach to sort this out, I would think -- organic carbon residue is identifiable by the inclusion of organic elements such as DNA and other elements associated with life processes, is it not? Carbon dating is another angle that should be able to narrow down where oil generates from.

I have always accepted the received wisdom of fossil-fuel's organic provenance, but I owuld be glad to be proved wrong. If the planet itself is making the stuff, maybe the scarcity panic is a lot more bogus than boggus. If you see what I mean! :)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 01 Nov 05 - 08:42 PM

Amos -

Despite what you see on "CSI" TV programs, DNA analysis can't quite answer all questions. The molecular breakdown and reforming that takes place in production of crude petroleum would certainly eliminate any traces of identifiable DNA fragments.

Carbon dating has been applied to crude petroleum, but the period during which the crude is created and accumulated to form a "field" that can be usefully tapped appears to be extremely long. It is very difficult to separate the variations in isotope concentration due to sequestered aging (the basis for Carbon dating) from variations due to mixing of parts of a field "produced over geological time spans."

An early post in this thread quoted "knowitall authors" discussed on AM radio as asserting that:

The running-out-of-oil myth: The 1970s scientific study known as Hubbert's Peak, predicting we would exhaust oil reserves by 2003, has been proven false.

This is just one "scientific fact" quoted by these authors that demonstrates a basically "crackpot" lack of knowledge, but does offer an basis for comment on the production and depletion question.

"Hubbert's Peak" did not predict that we would "exhaust all oil reserves by 2003." (The cited "talk show authors" obviously didn't read the report, or lacked the math skills to understand it.)

Hubbert's Peak predicted that a specific moderately sized oil field would reach its peak production (the Peak) at a specific future time, and that the rate at which oil could be extracted from that specific field would thereafter decline at a predictable rate. The prediction of the time for that field to "peak" was astonishingly accurate. The prediction for the rate of decline for that particular field was a little less accurate, but still pretty good.

Hubbert's methods have been applied to a number of other specific oil fields, and have been demonstrated - in every case where they have been applied - to be quite accurate in predicting when a given field will "peak." The estimation of how rapidly production will decline after the peak remains slightly less specific, but still convincingly predicts, supported by measured data, that eventually each individual field has a finite "capacity" for producing a predictable total amount of crude oil extractable by economically viable means.

Other analysts - not Hubble - have attempted to make composite predictions for known and functioning crude oil fields. There is some variation in results, but there is general agreement that the "peak" for extraction from all known and currently productive fields lies within a very few decades in the future. Known fields that cannot be tapped now due to cost or political constraints have been factored in by a few analysts - subject to rather large uncertainties - and including "known but untapped" reserves extends the peak possibly by a few years - not even by decades.

Once the peak production for currently operating fields is passed, it is fairly clear that current and extrapolated continual growth in consumption rates can be sustained only by opening new fields.

NO EVIDENCE of any "replenishment" on a time scale comparable to the time required to empty any field that's opened and extracted HAS EVER BEEN FOUND. It is entirely academic what "replenishment" process may or may not occur. All the crude oil that can be found, by us and by our next few hundred generations (perhaps our next few thousand generations) is already there.

A "vast oil field" is, on earth scale, essentially a small "pimple" on the face of the earth. We have looked at large enough areas where there are "no pimples" to make some estimates of how likely new discoveries are. It's not encouraging in the long term (a few decades) but we can predict that production will "dribble down to drips and drabs" in the not too distant future. The only thing we can debate is a quibble over years or decades.

In about the year 15,000,000 CE, if any of the current replenishment theories works, it may again be viable for someone to "invent" internal combustion engines. It will all be new by then.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 04:19 AM

The CO2 is largely consumed by plants which convert it back to O2, more/less the reverse of the burning process that created CO2 and water.

Sadly, that's wishful thinking. Plants photosythesise (produce sugars) for two purposes: to live (respire) and to grow. The respired sugars are returned to the atmosphere as CO2 almost immediately. The growth of the plant (leaves, stems, trunks, roots, tubers, flowers, seeds etc.) is sequestered until it rots, when bacteria break it down and return the CO2 to the atmosphere. So in all but the shortest terms, the biosphere is CO2- neutral- it neither adds to it nor subtracts from it. that's why the oxygen content has remained essentially constant for millions of years.

But if we add fossil carbon to the atmosphere, the only way this can be incorporated is if the biosphere grows proportionally, otherwise it hangs about as loose CO2. Most evidence suggests that we are actually reducing the size of the biosphere, though it's difficult to measure. At least, few suggest that it's growing.

The CO2 content of the atmosphere is incredibly small- its concentration is only about 0.03%, about a tenth of the concentration of of argon for example. But it is a very active component of the atmosphere, as it is one of the main causes of the greenhouse effect.

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 04:34 AM

Paul B -

An additional factor in CO₂ cycling is that any significant increase in concentration may push more of it up in the atmosphere. Once caught by the trade winds and/or otherwise trapped in high altitude circulation, the excess CO₂ is inaccessible to bio processes taking place at low altitudes, and could persist for very long times.

Some of it is continually brought down by rainfall, but the condensation that might sweep excess gasses down normally occurs at fairly low altitudes within the vertical circulation systems. Ice crystals formed at higher altitudes have little capacity for absorbing CO₂. High altitude gases may be "immune" to cleansing by the vertical circulation.

At present, this is in the category of "suspected processes" without convincing proofs that it does (now) occur to significant extent; but a few people worry that the stabilizing effect of low altitude biological CO₂ cycling could be "broken" if the effect is found to be significant.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 07:49 AM

I'll put this in simpler terms than the textbook does.

"Plants are not the main sink of CO2"

The oceans contain about 60 times as much carbon as the atmosphere... The level of CO2 is controlled to a large extent by uptake and release from [the oceans].

The mechanisms for this are varied, and no-one is quite sure how significant each one is, or how it will change. The only common factor is that the all can only be seen with a microscope, or from a satillite.


Amos- Carbon dating only works for a limited length of time. Currently, using our best instruments, and a very good sample, this is about 100,000 years. It will never be possible to go much beyond that.

And that's a " The moon wil never turn into a lump of cheese " never, not a " Will this guy never get to the end of this off-pitch, unaccompanied version of Tam Lin?" Never...

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: Peace
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 10:23 AM

So much for asking simple yes-no questions.

Subject: RE: BS: Is it possible to make fuel oil?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 02 Nov 05 - 01:43 PM

Here is a renewable energy newsletter I have just subscribed to..

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/assets/newsletter/