Quote:
Originally Posted by Tel 911S
The energy used for refining petrol , [ measured in KWh ] , comes from burning oil , [ or gas ] , and refineries use their CHPs for electric power for their pumps & lighting . They then feed the excess into the grid . Overall the 6 major refineries in the UK are net contributers to the grid .
The idea that refining uses a lot of electricity is just total rubbish.
If the refineries shut down there would be less generation capacity on the grid .
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They don't tend to burn oil for creating power. It's pretty bad at that as it tends to burn rather than explode, which is what is good for creating power. (Which is why car engines compress it, to make a bang). It's gas, or renewable. There are refineries running off of solar.
That, however, is besides the point as nobody said they were not contributing the grid. That doesn't change what I said - you cannot do a 100% efficient energy conversion. Energy is lost out of the system during the conversion from electricity to petrol. It takes 6kwh of electricity to refine 1 gallon of petrol. If you stop refining petrol, you gain back 6kwh of energy for every gallon you do not refine. Not that due to the fuel type (liquid), you then need to refine diesel to power the lorries which transport the petrol. Petrol is in a unique position that it requires a similarly powered vehicle to transport the fuel. Whilst gas an electricity have grids, which means they don't need to double dip on the energy spent to distribute the energy.
Whether the refineries add to the grid or not doesn't matter. If the refineries weren't there then instead of 75% of the power they consume being used to produce products, 100% of it would go to power production.
Note that the 75/25 split is a randomly chosen number. It doesn't matter what the number is, because even if only 1% of it is spent and 99% is put back into the system, it is still a net loss.
Your post only works on the basis that the hydrocarbons being used by the refinery would cease to exist when looking at it from my point of view. But they would not.
Or let's put it another way. If you have a battery charger and you plug it into the wall and it charges the batteries. Unplugging it from the wall does not suddenly lose the energy which it would have taken. It still exists in the system. It's just going somewhere else now.