The New Head of Chrysler gets it!

[IHWillys]

Also, I might add, this energy density differential needs to be accounted for in any discussion of national use of the raw material petroleum oil. If we can only get a fraction of diesel out of a barrel of oil as we can get gasoline, that needs to be subtracted from diesels 'efficiency'. We are talking about barrels of oil and if 1,000,000 barrels of oil can net 20,000,000 gallons of gasoline but only 18,000,000 gallons of diesel, then diesel vehicles' efficiency have to make up that difference first just to break even. Then only what they can give beyond that is any true gain as far as the national rate of consumption of oil.

Ken

PS, made up figures above used to illustrate a point. We can't make as much diesel from a barrel of oil as we can gasoline though I'm not sure of the current numbers and I'm also not sure of what the numbers could be if refining was targeted to maximize one over the other.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a diesel supporter.

[IHWillys]

Just for kicks I went looked up the refining mix.
This site:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasoline/wh...arrel_oil.html

reports these numbers:

51.4% gasoline
15.3% distallate fuel oil
12.6% jet fuel
3.3% residual fuel oil
...other stuff

So, using these numbers, I'll do a little comparison. I'm going to add up all three of the oils as they could be used in a diesel engine and use this number as the diesel fuel. Thus we have 51.4% gasoline, 31.2% diesel.

I'll use Norm's upper-end number of 40% efficiency increase for a given vehicle being diesel powered vs gasoline.


Drive 10,000 miles. Gasoline car gets 30mpg. Diesel car thus gets 42 mpg.

10,000/30 = 333 gallons of gasoline consumed
10,000/42 = 238 gallons of diesel consumed

Looking pretty good for diesel right?

Now let's look at how many "barrels of oil" had to be refined to power each those 10,000 miles.

Note, I am not adding in any additional source of energy into the gasoline like any of the oxygenated fuel additives or such and I am not adding in any of alkylates that account for processing gain in the refining process.

Gasoline car needed 333 gallons. Barrel of oil is 42 gallons. 51.4% = 21.5 gallons of gasoline per barrel of oil. 333/21.5 = 15.5. So 15.5 barrels of oil had to be refined to power the gasoline car for 10,000 miles at 30 mpg.

Diesel car needed 238 gallons. 31.2% of 42 = 13.1 gallons of fuel oil per barrel of oil. 238/13.1 = 18.2 barrels of oil. So the diesel car needed 18.2 barrels of oil to be refined to travel the 10,000 miles at 42 mpg.

15.5 barrels of oil for the gasoline car, 18.2 barrels for the diesel car. See my point? How does this help out the national consumption of oil?

Another way of looking at it: miles per barrel of oil(mpb)

gasoline car gets 645 mpb
diesel car gets 550 mpb

Now, I will bring up one big sticking point that I hit on in the earlier post and that is I just used the current product results from refining a barrel of oil. I don't know how far this can be moved around. Such as, could all the oil that currently becomes gasoline, be instead refined into diesel? I don't know the answer to this. I expect there are limitations on the amount of any specific product that can be refined out of a barrel of oil but I don't know what these are. To do a proper examination we need to be able to compare using what we could get out of a barrel of oil if we wanted to maximize gasoline production and what we could get if we wanted to maximize diesel production. Anyone have a link to this info?

Ken

[MoparNorm]

Point noted and taken, however product cost is not product value, when it comes to actual overhead cost.
The equation you use makes sense if we were metering BTU's, and maybe that is the aim of the oil companies.
If you consider that the cost to mine gold is the same as the cost to mine lead, but gold has a higher value to the consumer.
I would hope that fuel costs do not come to that, but maybe that is the thinking (which would once again screw the consumer and slow our transition to a more energy efficient fuel).
The cost to extract and refine diesel is less in man hours and cost, than the cost to refine gasoline. That fact alone should more than off-set any gasoline vs. diesel volume issues when you consider the per barrel cost.
The real issue is that more gasoline is being refined than diesel thereby creating an artificial diesel shortage since the demand for diesel is growing faster than the demand for gasoline.
I'm not 100% convinced that the oil companies are not in concert to keep diesel prices high, as it makes the investor and speculator inflated gasoline prices look cheap by comparison and slows the development of bringing diesel powered vehicles to market.
One more variable into the equation is this, the United States has more coal than the Middle East has oil.
Coal can be converted to diesel oil easier than it can be converted to gasoline, it is not environmentally acceptable to burn coal in powerplants, but the coal can be used to supplement the diesel supply.

[MoparNorm]

Hot Off The Press!

Chrysler to expand Diesel offerings!

From Allpar.com
Chrysler’s vice president of regulatory affairs says the company will use diesels in its efforts to meet new federal fuel-economy regulations.

“We believe today that there is room for diesel,” Deborah Morrissett told reporters on Wednesday. “You are going to see diesels in our product line.”

Morrissett would not comment on new vehicles targeted for a diesel option but Chrysler already offers diesels for some of its truck models, including the Jeep Grand Cherokee and diesel is a popular choice for many Chrysler vehicles sold in Europe, including its minivans.

With the recent steep rise in gasoline prices, consumer interest in diesel-powered vehicles is increasing. Even though diesel fuel is still more expensive than gasoline, diesels can get up to 30 percent better fuel efficiency than conventional engines and, in passenger cars, can actually exceed the highway mileage of hybrids.

Reported by Bill Cawthon

[JimmieD]

Sorry I don't know how to do the math to demonstrate this, and don't even know if I can explain it,but:

That breakdown is in part a matter of choice by the oil companies or refineries. That is they WANT to produce that range of products from each barrel of oil. If they did not then the figures would be entirely different. That is to say with increased diesel usage there is the assumption that there are more diesel users, and less gasoline users. As the numbers keep changing and gasoline useage dwindles then we no longer have to manufacture the inefficent gasoline, or the engines that run on it. Several of the products that are now used as low quality oils could use the products used to make gasoline to then make them into refined diesel.

With these types of changes and therefore a much simplified refining process, of making fewer products with less complicated refining steps, it takes less energy to refine. It is also a much simpler and quicker process in terms of required equipment specific to those other byproduct distillations. I takes more heat to make gasoline in a cracking column. So in the long run there are huge energy and capital investment savings, and less energy required to manufacture that other distillation equipment, and less energy required to perform those complicated [not very] refining steps and less equipment required.

Overall in addition to the other factors mentioned there are these hidden advantages that would conceivably change the entire petroleum manufacturing picture. Unfortunately there is no part of that simplification or energy or capital investment savings, not one red cent, that would ever be passed on to consumers. With gasoline it's a win/win for refineries as they are able to sell less for more, by changing the molecular structure of crude petroleum into lighter fuels inluding addition of alcohol and water as is now done with gasoline. Yes, water.

[MoparNorm]

...
Now, I will bring up one big sticking point that I hit on in the earlier post and that is I just used the current product results from refining a barrel of oil. I don't know how far this can be moved around. Such as, could all the oil that currently becomes gasoline, be instead refined into diesel? I don't know the answer to this. I expect there are limitations on the amount of any specific product that can be refined out of a barrel of oil but I don't know what these are. To do a proper examination we need to be able to compare using what we could get out of a barrel of oil if we wanted to maximize gasoline production and what we could get if we wanted to maximize diesel production. Anyone have a link to this info?

Ken

I think your math is good, all except the mpb, because that is speculative. I believe that the % of gas vs. oil, of each barrel is arbitrary, based upon need and depending upon demand.
In other words 100% of a barrel cannot be turned into gasoline, nor can 100% of the barrel be refined into diesel, but my understanding is that more of a barrel can be refined into diesel than can be refined into gasoline. So the amount of diesel derived at, from each barrel, depends upon the demand, if the the percentage was 50/50 or more, then diesel would indeed lessen our dependency upon oil.
We need to wean ourselves off those gassers, build nuke plants to generate more electricity, that is a huge amount of our oil usage at present.
In fact I was listening to a environmental planner talk a few weeks ago. He said that if everyone had a plug-in hybrid, the USA would be in real serious trouble, because we would need 25 additional nuclear power plants to generate the electricity needed, as it would drain every source of power we now have, just to run the chargers......

[MoparNorm]

Found some info, "Up until about 15-20 years ago, refineries used only about 50% of a barrel of crude oil to make distillates such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. The remainder of the barrel of crude oil went to "residual oil". Today, as a result of different refining techniques and additive packages, the refinery uses 90% or more of the same barrel of crude, which clearly has consequences for fuel stability."

Current percentages are even worse than you assumed: note these are raw gallons, not percentages.



And fuel costs are only half derived from the price of oil...



All three sources from the US Dept. Of Energy.

[MoparNorm]

More of the story, from Road & Track Mag.,

Both gasoline and diesel fuel are primarily petroleum products. There are biofuels of each type, but none has proven feasible in the large scale. Diesel fuel, like kerosene and jet fuel, is a middle distillate; gasoline, a lighter, high-end product.

Distressingly enough, in the old days when lamp and lubricating oils were the petroleum products in demand, high-end distillates were dumped into rivers and streams! Today, refineries are optimized for output, but still not without tradeoffs. The Europeans, for instance, refine so much diesel fuel that they end up with a glut of high-end product, some of this gasoline actually being sent our way. U.S. refineries favor cracking techniques that get more high-end out of the entire barrel. Ironically, one byproduct of this is an overproduction of diesel — but it's the wrong kind of diesel, with indifferent cetane and too much sulfur.

Just as octane measures the goodness of gasoline (actually, its knock resistance), cetane is the diesel's measure of quality. Briefly, cetane is inversely related to ignition lag; the higher the cetane, the less lag, the better the fuel. European diesel fuel is around 55 cetane; ours, more like 42-44.

Sulfur is the real problem, though, now and with future emissions controls, here and in Europe. Petroleum crudes vary from source to source. Benchmark Arab Light, for example, is a sweet crude (i.e., low in sulfur). Mayan and other Central American sources are considerably more sour. Refineries can finesse costs of crude supplies and sulfur removal, but only so far.

Sulfur in U.S. diesel fuel averages around 350 parts per million, 500 ppm being not unknown. In Europe, the absolute cap is 300 ppm; average levels are perhaps 175. In fact, Europeans already have low-sulfur diesel available with a maximum of 50 ppm, phasing down to 10 by 2005. We have low-sulfur diesel as well, but only in California. We also have similar national goals seen as crucial in meeting increasingly stringent (and immensely complex!) emissions-control standards phasing in between now and 2007. For example, by June 2006, 80 percent of U.S. diesel fuel sold by major refineries has a 15-ppm limit; this, rising to 100 percent by 2010.

(This explains why, the mass influx of diesels is not slated until 2010, the fuel in most states would harm the motors and the catalyst in the ULSD motors.)

[JimmieD]

Very interesting stuff! Also of note is that the 21% manufacturing cost is matched by 21% taxation, meaning it costs us just as much to have government stand there with their hands in our pockets and watch as it does for the refinery to make the product!

No part of the equation indicates that government does anything to earn that money besides the process of extortion used to extract it from us.

[JeffTheMarine]

Reading this post is a sort of blast to the recent past. Right before the recession. In 2009 Dodge had plans to build Ram 1500 trucks with I believe V6 Cummins engines that were supposed to have great output and great mileage on top of having the dependability of being a Cummins. Then the recession hit and they almost went BR and the whole plan was cancelled. From what I read it was mostly because the cost of the exhaust system with the new DPF filter to "lower emissions" ruin diesels and we know it cost just as much as producing the engine itself. I would love to have seen a 1/2 ton diesel Dodge truck.


Jeff

[MoparNorm]

Reading this post is a sort of blast to the recent past. Right before the recession. In 2009 Dodge had plans to build Ram 1500 trucks with I believe V6 Cummins engines that were supposed to have great output and great mileage on top of having the dependability of being a Cummins. Then the recession hit and they almost went BR and the whole plan was cancelled. From what I read it was mostly because the cost of the exhaust system with the new DPF filter to "lower emissions" ruin diesels and we know it cost just as much as producing the engine itself. I would love to have seen a 1/2 ton diesel Dodge truck.


Jeff

For the record, Chrysler didn't almost go bankrupt, they did go bankrupt, and that ended the agreement with Cummins. It did not however end Cummins development of those motors and things are once again on track between Cummins and Dodge (Ram) to eventually bring V-6 and V-8 engines to market.
Also, since 2009, Chrysler-Fiat has purchased 50% of VM Motori from Roger Penske and that motor will be coming soon in the Grand Cherokee. It's a vast improvement over the 3.0 Mercedes that Jeep used when owned by Daimler, providing 404 lb ft. of torque (the same as the 5.7 Hemi) and achieving 34 mpg hwy and 28 mpg combined city/hwy, in the EPA testing cycle.

[JeffTheMarine]

Well by saying almost going bankrupt I was meaning they almost went under like no longer producing vehicles. I realize that they did go bankrupt and the restructure now puts Fiat in the game obviously. I have read articles about Fiat diesel engines being put into some of the newer vehicles and the idea of that. I realize that because it didn't happen in 2009 like it was supposed to doesn't mean that Cummins didn't just destroy or forget anything they learned or developed about the engines that were supposed to be used I was simply pointing out the fact that it was rather unfortunate that it didn't end up getting built like the original plan had anticipated because I was very excited about it.

Jeff

[Alxj64]

Currentlty Cummins is making a killing in the Euro market. They offer a 4.5L diesel that makes 250 hp and around 600 lb-ft of torque! Sadly the motor is not offered for sale or production in the US because it fails to meet the US emissions standards, which are much stricter than those in Europe.

I spoke with a Cummins dealer not too long ago about trying to source one of these engines. They laughed and said they had a guy do it... When the engine came in, the ECM had no tune on it. They flashed the tune onto the ECM (stand-alone unit) and the engine made less power than if he had bought a half as expensive domestic tuned engine because Cummins had to de-tune the engine so much to meet US emissions standards that a 205 hp motor (ISBe 205) was reduced to a miserable 110 hp to meet emissions.

As far as Chrysler and Cummins... It would be great to see the partnering for clean diesel technology, but the price tag on all of the DEF stuff and the pain that is now included with having to purchase and add one more thing to the vehicle will keep consumers, and thus manufacturers, further away from the diesel market in the US... Sad, because the new Cummins 3.3 that is used in Gen-sets would be awesome stuffed into a Wrangler.

[JStinson]

Currentlty Cummins is making a killing in the Euro market. They offer a 4.5L diesel that makes 250 hp and around 600 lb-ft of torque! Sadly the motor is not offered for sale or production in the US because it fails to meet the US emissions standards, which are much stricter than those in Europe.

I spoke with a Cummins dealer not too long ago about trying to source one of these engines. They laughed and said they had a guy do it... When the engine came in, the ECM had no tune on it. They flashed the tune onto the ECM (stand-alone unit) and the engine made less power than if he had bought a half as expensive domestic tuned engine because Cummins had to de-tune the engine so much to meet US emissions standards that a 205 hp motor (ISBe 205) was reduced to a miserable 110 hp to meet emissions.

As far as Chrysler and Cummins... It would be great to see the partnering for clean diesel technology, but the price tag on all of the DEF stuff and the pain that is now included with having to purchase and add one more thing to the vehicle will keep consumers, and thus manufacturers, further away from the diesel market in the US... Sad, because the new Cummins 3.3 that is used in Gen-sets would be awesome stuffed into a Wrangler.

Infuriating.