Question: Are power plants calibrated for imported oil?

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My first post..here goes.. I have been lurking awhile and thinking alot lately about something a colleague disclosed to me last summer. According to him, U.S. power plants that use petroleum products are specifically calibrated to use OPEC-grade fuel. My question to the forum is: If OPEC products become corrupt or supply lines are disrupted, and we are forced to use domestic sources, will this eventually have an adverse reaction to U.S. (or U.K.) power plant output? This question is especially troubling in light of the Australian aircraft/corrupt fuel situation. Thanks for your thoughts.

-- Christopher (vetnet@msn.com), January 23, 2000

Answers

Chris,

Your friend's contention is bunk. First most power comes from nuc, hydro, nat gas, and coal. Distillate is generally only burned as a supplemental fuel although there are a few NE units that burn it. The specs are universal. Six oil or resid also gets burned at some NE power plants. Almost all of it comes from the US or at least this hemisphere.

Oil accounts for less than 10 percent of our power production.

We import OPEC crude oil. There's very little OPEC refined products coming here. Its mostly gasoline from S Arabia and the Venz. It is NOT a factor on power generation.

Did you hear all that stuff from a Y2K forum? ;)

-- Downstreamer (downstream@bigfoot.com), January 23, 2000.


Lots of US oil refineries are set up to handle oil from specific production sources. For example a refinery set up for Saudi Light has to be extensively reworked to handle Alaskan or even Texas production.

But to my knowledge, oil-fired power plants burn what's known as bunker oil. It's something that looks akin to used motor oil and is basically not a very refined product, compared to diesel, heating oil, gasoline and kerosene. But because it has been through the refining process it's a standardized product; bunker oil is bunker oil is bunker oil.

WW

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 23, 2000.


Are not a lot of lubricants petroleum derived and very exacting in their specifications?

-- JIT (justintime@rightnow.net), January 23, 2000.

Kerosene is rated number 1, diesel fuel is rated number 2, and bunker oil is rated number 6. It is very heaavy and must be heated to flow. The oil is pumped through nozzles in the burner where it is mixed iwth air and burned. The nozzles are sized for the viscosity of the oil. A change in oil viscosity could require adjusting or changing the nozzles. If OPEC-grade fuel is different, we can adjust for it.

-- John (LITTMANNJ@AOL.COM), January 23, 2000.

Thanks for the timely responses! I've never known my friendly source I mentioned earlier to participate in Y2K forums or for that matter concern himself with bunk-like theories. He was in the nuclear power industry for many years, though.

-- Christopher (vetnet@msn.com), January 23, 2000.


Hey Christopher: Thanks for the post. You gotta develop a thick skin to talk to these guys, although they have always been fairly nice to me. Don't let it be your last post! (smile)

-- JoseMiami (caris@prodigy.net), January 24, 2000.

Chris, you said:

"This question is especially troubling in light of the Australian aircraft/corrupt fuel situation"

What has this got to do with power plant fuels?

-- Mr. Sane (hhh@home.com), January 24, 2000.


The corrupt fuel/aircraft situation seemed virtually impossible to thousands of pilots and even experts were aghast that something that is taken for granted such as high quality fuel for the use of the aircraft industry could have become so fouled up.

-- Christopher (vetnet@msn.com), January 24, 2000.

John, there is more than one grade of diesel fuel, it is not all #2.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), January 24, 2000.

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