HVO

[nod]

Just reading an article about HVO trials 

Looks like oil fired boilers can be easily converted 

[Ronan 1]

Whats HVO ??

[Ronan 1]

Just been reading up on it, sounds very good and seems to be a big push on it in Northern Ireland which is heavily reliant on heating oil.

 

At a similar price to oil and with 90% less co2 output making it lower than natural gas or electric it's something I will be looking into for my build......

 

Everyday a school day...

Thanks Nod

[SteamyTea]

8 hours ago, Ronan 1 said:

90% less co2 output

Take that with a pinch of salt.

[ProDave]

To save other readers from looking it up, this describes what HVO is https://www.crownoil.co.uk/faq/hvo-fuel/

 

A lot of waffle about how good it is with lots of claims but little actual figures to back it up.  If it is as good as they say, why is road transport not swapping to HVO en-mass?  Why is in never mentioned when discussing CO2 reduction?

[dpmiller]

I mght be wrong Dave but I think road transport *is* using it. I'm not sure that all the "biodiesel" that is in your B5 or B7 and that eg McDonalds say they run their lorries on is first-gen at this stage...

 

First generation biodiesel died a death locally about ten years back. Ther were a number of reasonably-sized plants and they were run and supported by some very smart chemists, but Customs issues and then the rise of the modern particle-filtered engines killed it off.

Some hardliners still remain in the filtered frying oil (WVO) camp tho

 

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

First generation biodiesel died a death locally about ten years back.

We get our fats and oils collected, sometimes we get money for it.

I seem to remember that it is only financially viable when crude is over $120/barrel (currently $77).

A few years back (2006 I think) there was a spike in oil prices caused by lack of refining and storage capacity, unfortunately this was miss reported as 'peak oil' and the world went crazy for bio fuels.  This lead to speculators moving in and buying up farming capacity to grow oil crops.  Thankfully it did not last long or we would now be back to 1970s food prices.

We currently use about 100 million barrels a day.  There is 1.7 MWh of energy in a barrel.

About 50% of a barrel can be converted to gasoline or diesel, so my car, which uses about 500 imperial gallons a year, or 2,270 litres.  That has about 9.7 kWh/litre, so about 22 MWh.  So about the same energy as 13 barrels, or 26 after refining.

I think a standard oil barrel is 22.5 inches diameter and 33.5 inches high (55 US gallons), so an area of around a quarter of a square metre.  Could fit a years worth of transport oil in my small shed.

Can see why we use oil.

[nod]

Probably similar to the hype with heat pumps 

Not particularly cheap to run

As yet no benefit to the environment 

 

I watched a program last night showing that one country had cut an eighth of there forests down to make the bio chips Good in one way Bad in another 

I just wonder why BG are still laying all these new gas mains if we are all going electric 

 

Edited July 6, 2021 by nod

[SteamyTea]

33 minutes ago, nod said:

Probably similar to the hype with heat pumps 

Not particularly cheap to run

As yet no benefit to the environment

You will need to flesh that statement out to support your claims.

Electricity, in the UK, is now below 300g/kWh. A gas boiler is around 225g/kWh. There is not much scope to improve a gas boiler, and if the SCoP of an ASHP stays at 3, it is still twice as good.

 

Going to revise that 300g number after checking. 181g/kWh last year.

So even resistance heating in a leaky house is better than gas.

Edited July 6, 2021 by SteamyTea