Heavy fuel oil: can we talk about it?

[/quote]
Thank You for sharing the info. And I thought the stuff was just discarded since it's so thick and needs heated to flow. [/quote]

It is thick stuff. Pour specs are usually 30deg C. Ships that run the HFO run what is often shown as RMG380 or HFO380. 380 is viscosity (cst at 50deg C)

The $100 / tonne price differential I stated is probably too high. It's probably more like $65 / mt in most areas. Still a big difference
 
It can be run through a delayed coker at the refinery to make gasoline, diesel, and other light products. Coke is the other product. Some refinerys do not make no. 6 fuel.
 
Originally Posted by meadows
It can be run through a delayed coker at the refinery to make gasoline, diesel, and other light products. Coke is the other product. Some refinerys do not make no. 6 fuel.




What's coke? I always thought it was some special form of coal. When I was a kid we used to find it along the old railroad tracks.
 
Coke is used sometimes as a fuel, especially in steel making. Higher grade coke (sometimes called needle coke) is use for making anodes. The stuff you picked up along the rr tracks could have been petroleum coke.

Interesting tidbit - when you see what looks like drilling derricks on top of a unit at a refinery, that's the delayed coker that was referred to above.
 
Originally Posted by GJM120
Coke is used sometimes as a fuel, especially in steel making. Higher grade coke (sometimes called needle coke) is use for making anodes. The stuff you picked up along the rr tracks could have been petroleum coke.

Interesting tidbit - when you see what looks like drilling derricks on top of a unit at a refinery, that's the delayed coker that was referred to above.



Thank You sir for the education. I have learned a lot from you
smile.gif
 
I liked to think of it as liquid coal. It's not crude oil, it's more like the "bottom of the barrel" when all the good stuff to make gasoline and diesel (and motor oil feedstocks) come off.

We also used to sell a product called "Black Oil" in the asphalt department. I always had a sneaking suspicion that it was just Bunker C, that wouldn't meet fuel specs for some reason. This was used as Road Oil, or Dust Oil, and was sprayed on the sides of the dusty back roads to keep the dirt and dust down. Sometimes the entire road surface was sprayed, IF you complained to the mayor enough!
 
Originally Posted by Driz
Originally Posted by meadows
It can be run through a delayed coker at the refinery to make gasoline, diesel, and other light products. Coke is the other product. Some refinerys do not make no. 6 fuel.




What's coke? I always thought it was some special form of coal. When I was a kid we used to find it along the old railroad tracks.

Coke is also a kind of purified coal, that can burn hotter than regular coal, used in steelmaking in a steel mill (using iron ore, not scrap)-something that companies did A LOT in car 51's area of the world in the old days (all up & down the Ohio River, from Pittsburgh to Portsmouth, OH). Pet coke is the petroleum product.
 
The driver that used to haul that hot tanker past me every day told me one day that one night he got a ticket for smoking in the cab. It was one of our more zealous stateys, the kind who would write his mother a ticket. The sad part is he never smoked hauling gasoline but with Bunker oil it meant nothing. He said it takes a torch to make that goo burn. Far more like road tar than fuel oil .
I was pulled over for 71 in a 65, ~5 miles south of the Newburgh exit on the Northway, and actually issued a ticket. Must have been the same guy :LOL:

78fba1939bbbf682165dcb6dbf3c5b2f.jpg
 
Oil is always useful. If they use less of it for fuel, it will most likely be used in ashphalt making, still LOTS of roads being made!
 
Oil is always useful. If they use less of it for fuel, it will most likely be used in ashphalt making, still LOTS of roads being made!
Maybe you have insight on why countries don’t take used motor oils and turn that into say 50% gas/diesel/ heating oil.

I understand that Safety Kleen turns 96% back into “finished lubricants”. I mean is it REALLY CHEAPER to drill for crude?

Thank You
 
Maybe you have insight on why countries don’t take used motor oils and turn that into say 50% gas/diesel/ heating oil.

I understand that Safety Kleen turns 96% back into “finished lubricants”. I mean is it REALLY CHEAPER to drill for crude?

Thank You
Yes, with an established supply chain, it typically IS cheaper to get "new". The same goes for mining uranium, even though you can reprocess SNF, very few places actually do, or have even bothered pursuing any form of reprocessing, because mining fresh is still cheaper.
 
Gotta wonder why in this time of shortages #3 diesel isn’t back at the pump? Bunker can be refined into #3 that works in anything so long as sulphur meets spec.

Sulphur free #3 diesel can also be made for under $1 a gallon from dirty waste styrofoam, #2, #4, #5 and #6 plastic . Back during the last fuel crisis folks were doing it at home.
 
In the winter the local city govt uses steam heating and burns #4 fuel oil or as Marathon oil classifies it as #4 distillate. It is dark black and has a crude / diesel oil odor and it does not require preheating like 5 or 6.
Doing a Google search heavy fuel is a residual fuel oil. It doesn’t call it a distillate. I’m probably wrong
 
Doing a Google search heavy fuel is a residual fuel oil. It doesn’t call it a distillate. I’m probably wrong

A lot of terminology varies from region to region.

My area, we call it bunker fuel. So bunker 2, 4, 6.

Other regions call it distillate fuel. Some call it marine fuel. Etc. As long as the idea is passed, the terminology works.
 
I worked at a shingle manufacture and they got the oil like that for making the asphalt. Couple million gallon tanks on the property. They also used it as a heating medium to use on all the double wall pipes for the transport of the liquid asphalt to the different sites where it was used in the manufacturing process. They had a special boiler that heated the oil up for the heating pipes..
That’s what I think HFO or bunker fuel was used for besides being burned by ships over the seas - the shingle manufacturers(Owens Corning has their own asphalt operation, so does IKO, I haven’t seen GAF or CertainTeed asphalt on a hot-mop roofing jobsite) use it as a feedstock for oxidized weathering-grade asphalt. Roofing asphalt, be it used for shingles or hot-melt for laid-up roofing on polyiso board or tar & gravel goes through an oxidation step.
 
Back
Top