While browsing my tweets of January and February, I found an interesting article giving a new reason of why electric cars and vehicles in general are great and necessary in a low carbon economy.
Indeed, removing the need for oil not only reduces greenhouse gases emissions from the burning of that said oil, but also of refining it. The latter activity being to Solar Charged Driving higly energy and water intensive.
It indeed takes 6 kWh to refine a gallon (3.8 liters) of gas. This is why “It takes more electricity to drive the average gasoline car 100 miles than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles.“
This is true in America where cars and other vehicles are notoriously inefficient compared to other countries. I am wondering if it would also be true elsewhere.
So, refining consumes a lot of electricity, but what about water, another critical resource as the world warms To Consumer Energy Report :
The ConocoPhillips refinery in Billings processes 62,000 bbls of crude oil, or 2.6 million gallons per day. The reliability of most refineries is in the 90-95% range, so if we assumed 92.5% on-stream time, the refinery processes 2.6 million * 365 * 0.925, or 879 million gallons of crude oil per year.
The water usage then amounts to 456 million/879 million, or 0.52 gallons of water per gallon of crude oil processed.
Note that this is actual make-up water that is brought into the refinery. In other words, this is the actual usage of the refinery.
As this fact should be more known to the general public, so please share !
(via Solar Feeds)