Is Diesel Really a By Product in the refining of Gas

It's not really proper to say that diesel is a by-product of making gasoline. If we didn't have a use for gasoline, and burned only diesel, we would consider gasoline to be a waste product of refining diesel oil. However, diesel is a natural residual product of gasoline production. Refine-out the diesel and you are left with heavier by-products such as lubricating oils, waxes, bunker fuel and bitumen. And since the oil industry lets very little go to waste, extracting every possible product that has commercial value from every barrel of crude, nothing can really be considered a "waste by-product." We even eat some of it in the form of whipped non-dairy desert toppings and food waxes.

http://www.energyinst.org.uk/education/coryton/page7.htm

 

Before for we had internal combustion engines gasoline was just a by product of fuel oil.

 

Sorry, I disagree. You would NEVER have gasoline if you only refined for diesel. Gasoline needs to be more refined than diesel. It IS proper to say diesel is a by-product of gasoline. One barrel of oil can give you only so much gasoline. Diesel is what's left over from refining oil for gasoline. There was a time before The diesel engine (internal combustion engines), they would burn diesel in the middle of the dessert.

 

You are correct that if we refined only for diesel that we would never have gasoline -- but only because gasoline would be burned-off in the refining process. Gasoline is lighter and more volatile than diesel, and you can't get the diesel without going through the gasoline first. Whether or not you make use of that gasoline is another matter.

 

Err ... no, it's not quite like that. You don't get one product because of another. The various products that are a result of the refining process are because of the different hydrocarbons contained in the base product (crude oil). The purpose of the refining process is to separate the base product into its constituant parts.

Different base crudes can be more or less suited to producing a specific product, i.e., gasoline vs. asphalt.

BTW, Otto Diesel's engine was initially designed to run on peanut oil.

 

True, you don't get one product because of another, per se. But the various distillates occur at different incremental stages of the distillation process. You get gasoline before you get the diesel. You get bunker fuel after the diesel. It's similar to distilling alcohol out of beer: Alcohol vaporizes at a lower temperature than water, which allows it to be separated from the beer, then condensed into a more-or-less pure product, leaving behind the water (spent beer). If you continue to distill the spent beer, you would get water as a distillate, leaving behind a heavier residue.

 

If that's the case, then why did they have to burn the left over by-produce of gas which is diesel? We wouldn't have a thing called diesel, looking at it the way you see it.

 

Uh, it's not "the way I see it" ... it's science. Gasoline is a different carbon than diesel. The disposal (burning) of a "waste" product has to do with markets and economics.

Here in Alberta, we used to flare off natural gas that was produced along with oil at well sites not that long ago. The economics of the market that existed at that time just didn't justify the cost of building pipelines, storage and refining facilities, etc. Not anymore.

 

LOL, OK ......