The Price of Petrol

[MrTomServo]

Not knowing anything about chemistry, there's obviously something I'm missing here, but we now have semi and fully synethic engine oils - in other words we can make oil. Rather than being inferior to the real thing, these oils are actually a better and more expensive product, with most modern engines specifying their use rather than using natural mineral oil.

Granted, engine oil is a heavier, less refined product, but could we not develop synthetic petrol (or at least synetic diesel) too?

Or is synethic oil only suitable for use as a lubricant rather than a fuel?

True, chemists can manufacter synthetic oil from grain oils (like corn and canola, for instance) but it costs far FAR more to do that than pull it straight out of the ground and heat it up for a little while. There is one company in the US, Giant, that actually makes gasoline that's entirely made with corn. It's, of course, much more expensive.

If you search google for a term called "peak oil" and read the first few hits, it will hit home fairly quickly that oil is a finite resource, and at some point we will run out.

Think about this, too: everything you see that is plastic, or was manufactured or made with a plastic part came from oil. Oil isn't just for use as fuel; without oil, it's back to the late 19th century for us.

[Larry Scutta]

Tax and the like are high in this country, but the original prce of the oil is kept artificially high.

Indeed they are, but crude oil is sold for the same price around the world, and when the final market product sells in the US for a third of what it does in America - making the UK tax markup even higher than it is for other products, it is clearly the UK government that is largely the reason why our fuel prices are so high.

Tax is a factor, but there's also basic supply and demand to take into account, the US uses more fuel than us therefore they get it cheaper. Even when diffrences in population are taken into account, the US guzzles oil/petrol more than any other country in the world.

As to where cars will go when the oil runs out, I think the future is autogas. I just do buy the concept of electric cars for the masses. Aswell as the performance issue, they suffer from limited range, and however far the range increases too, once it's gone the car is dead in the water for a long time whilst the battery is recharged (assuming facilities to recharge it even exists). In contrast, with petrol cars when you run out of fuel you just fill it up again and carry on.

Well there is hydrogen - the technology for that is improving all the time, and you can run vehicles on oil from other sources.

You can run a diesel engine on vegetable oil. In fact during the fuel blockades many people did. According to an article I read (and kept, somewhere) it was very big in South Wales, a branch of Asda in Swansea suddenly found that all their cheap sunflower oil was selling out very quickly..... people were pouring it straight into their cars. One man in the article was being given used oil free by a local authority, filtering it and running his van on it.

It's very popular in Germany, and the best cars to run on vegetable oil are German cars (BMW, Mercedes etc)

All perfectly legal as long as you pay the tax on it. The benefits are many: it's a renewable resource, it benefits agriculture, and it's'carbon neutral' - the plants that go to make it use up as much carbon dioxide as they provide to power cars


http://www.vegoilmotoring.com/

[rts]

I was in Germany during the petrol protests of 2000 and despite Germany being a prodominantly green, eco-friendly country, there was a significant up-roar by motorists at the soaring prices.

[russnet]

Well Texaco in Milton Keynes has put it's prices up to 83.9p. We have no such thing called competition here in MK. So within 24 hours, you will be guaranteed that all the big players will be 83.9p They are quick at putting the prices up between the big players but reluctant at putting them down.

So at 83.9p this means it's only 2p away before the riots of September 2000 and apart from a few news items in the media, coverage so far seems pretty quiet to the build up of 2000.

[johnnyboy]

Another worrying aspect of running out of oil is what will happen to the aviation industry.

Am I right in thinking that no alternative fuel has been developed for this?

[Pete]

I thought they were making DVDs out of paper at the moment.

[MrTomServo]

Am I right in thinking that no alternative fuel has been developed for this?

Unless you consider the liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen rockets used for going into space, then no, there really aren't any alternative fuels for aviation.

Basically, every jet engine needs something flammable to do its magic to make thrust. So if you can come up with another non-petroleum flammable liquid that can be safely transported and is non-volatile, then you will be very, very rich.

[Pete]

And cheap for that matter.

I thought fuel cells were the next big thing anyhow.

[MrTomServo]

I thought fuel cells were the next big thing anyhow.

Fuel cells are fantastic pieces of work, actually. When I was a chem major in college, that's what I really wanted to work on. (So much for that career path; anyway) The basic concept is that you take a gas, like hydrogen, and dissolve it into a metal. You've seen gasses dissolved into liquids -- just look a fizzy drinks. It's the same sort of process, only much MUCH more difficult. The upshot is that the hydrogen is non-combustible and safe to transport when stored in this fashion. And, you can pack a lot of it in.

Here's the catch: the metal that hydrogen dissolves best into is platinum. And at hundreds of pounds an ounce, one fuel cell costs millions. (For a midsize automobile, the cell itself would have to be about the size of a red brick.)

Recently, there have been many advances in synthetic materials to dissolve hydrogen into, but there remains the problems of infrastructure (hydrogen filling stations, etc.) and car manufacturers getting on board.

Powering an aircraft with a fuel cell would be difficult, because they work best with smaller engines that turn some sort of shaft, like in cars and lawnmowers. Jet engines work on an entirely different principle.

[alowerevil]

It's on the increase. You can get a few different types from 'Smart', including a very nice 'sports car' model.

'Smart' cars aren't electric, they just have low emission petrol engines.
See http://www.thesmart.co.uk.

Even if everyone owned an electric car, this would only displace the need for fossil fuels, not remove it, as the majority of power stations that generate the electricity to recharge your car still use some form of fossil fuel.

'Autogas' powered cars could only possibly be a temporary solution, as we would probably soon face the problem of gas reserves running out if everyone was using it to fuel their cars.

LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) is no good either as that still comes from oil anyway.

The running out of crude oil will also affect the Petrochemicals industry, from which we get things like Plastics - pretty much every consumer product has some plastic in it and/or its packaging these days, and more or less every cable used in your home/office will have plastic insulation.
Although 'Organic' plastics are possible they are still in the developmental stage as far as I know. Polymers produced from oil are also used in Synthetic fibres (clothing etc), paints
and Bitumen such as Asphalt - as used in road surfacing.


In regards to "making DVDs out of paper at the moment", this is something that Sony and Toppan Printing are developing for the next-generation Blu-Ray Discs (see http://www.pcpro.co.uk/?http://www.pcpr ... p?id=56190).


For an alternative method of powering your car, BMW are currently doing some interesting work with liquid Hydrogen combustion engines that allow you to still also use petrol in them, so running out of Hydrogen when there's no Hydrogen Stations around wouldn't be a problem. (http://www.bmw.com/generic/com/en/fasci ... index.html).

[russnet]

GMTV was reporting on the fuel prices today and reckons in it's tabloid style that the price will average about 92.9p by next month. I can't see it going up by 10p within a month considering it went up by 6p over the last year but whatever the pennies, it's certainly going up the way. Thank god, I've got a one litre granny car