O/T Kerosene

[Anonymous-0]

Since kerosene is "coal oil" derived from coal and we have a huge supply of coal in our country, why is the price of kerosene sky high? And rather than depending on ethanol to get us off our oil dependency why couldn't we use more kerosene? Old tractors used to start on gasoline and run on kerosene, couldn't cars run on it? I've heard Hitler used coal oil for his war machine.

 

[Coloken]

Guess I will have to be the first to tell you that kerosene "coal oil" does not come from coal. Its comes from the same place as diesel, jet fuel etc.

 

[HossinMe]

Ya,we just gonna hafta go afta them durn sperm whales again. Hoss

 

[tlak]

A fuel pump repair man told me there wouldn't be anu kero by next year, doing away with it. #1 diesel.

 

[Eric in IL]

Ken,

I just looked it up on Wikipedia, trying to figure out why they ever called it coal oil.

They say it does come from a special type of coal, and that "coal oil" could be used to make kerosene. I am guessing that you are right though, about todays kerosene not being related to the coal oil of days gone by?

Here is the link if you care to give it a read:
Wikipedia coal oil

 

[IH2444]

At almost $4 a gal kerosene is already gone as far as I am concerned.
I threw away my wick type heaters and sold all but one torpedo.

 

[Coloken]

Eric, of course you are right. It is my understnding that coal can be made into just about any thing that we now get from petrolium (sp?) There is no doubt in my mind that in 30 or 40 years we will be using a liquid fuel, a synthetic gasoline that we pump like regular gasoline, and made in factories from coal, which is in large supply.
Think the "coal oil" name came to be cause it came from the ground, rather that whales or pigs.
To get real picky, when I was kid many years ago, there was coal oil that was a little thicker and smoked a bit in the lamps. Neibours used it but my fmily insisted on kerosene that did not smoke up the lamp as bad. Kinda like #1 or #2.
Was in high school befor we gave up the kerosene lamps.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Thanks for the link. Before I posted I looked kerosene up in the World Book Encyclopedia. In conjunction to what your link tells about James Young, it says Abraham Gesner patented a distilling process for refining oil in 1854. It says he refined the oil from coal and for this reason kerosene was called coal oil. I vaguely remember hearing the Germans used coal oil for fuel during WW II. They were ahead of their time in other technologies- I wonder if their process for making fuel was efficient or if it could be used today.

 

[RodinNS]

Kerosene is very much a product of plain old crude oil. That's what MADE Standard Oil, and it's still one of the products of the refining process. It's interesting to note that gasoline was actually a useless byproduct of refining 140 years ago....

Rod

 

[john in la]

Well if there is no kero by next year I guess we are going to have to take a very big step backwards in transpotation.
Sure is a lot of jets out there going to be grounded since kero and jet fuel are interchangeable. The only thing differant is the tax code.

 

[buickanddeere]

#1 diesel is pretty much kerosene. Jet A-1 is a clean version of Keosene. The US military most gas turbines/jets and diesel engines on JP8 which is close to Jet A-1.
The US is going to have to level mountains and use coal liquidfication to drive the economy.

 

[Anonymous-0]

4.50 a gallon here.Outdoor fuel tanks have to use kerosene or blends here to avoid gelling of fuel.

 

[Anonymous-0]

A product called range oil was sold in the 50s.It was hard to find kerosene for lamps then.Lamp kerosene cost more when you could find it.The import oil wick heaters created a demand for cleaner kerosene in the early 70s.We were on quotas for gasoline and fuel oils then.The quota system will come back and rationing will be next.Ford motor co produced gasoline during the coke making process and sold it close to the factory.I keep some kerosene for lamps and use in my furnace if the tank runs out.Last # 2 fuel oil I bought was 3.65 a gallon.Many people here are lugging home off road diesel 5 gallons at a time.

 

[WeirdDeere]

The Germans used coal for fuel (special processes to form it into gasoline, etc) because they had no other choice. By the end of the war their sources for crude oil were getting captured; and most of all, their oil refineries were steadily and constantly getting destroyed, forcing them to quickly develop synthetic fuels. Fuel shortages caused most of their problems.

Brandon

 

[greygoat]

Some have said, "the Amish are lucky, they don"t
have to buy gasoline". But the ones here in Western Wisconsin use Kerosene for stoves, and
for lights. They"re getting hit in the pocketbook
also!

 

[JML755]

From Detroit Free Press:
"To support the program, GM is prepared to put in fueling stations that deliver hydrogen in a compact form, called 700-bar, that delivers the desired mileage from a fill-up. But GM was surprised [u:8de0d6699e]at how difficult it is to get the permits it needs to build adequate fueling stations[/u:8de0d6699e]......What is urgently needed is sufficient investment by energy providers and the cooperation of government to assure auto companies that the required hydrogen infrastructure will be in place when we deploy our next generation of fuel cell-electric vehicles."

I firmly believe that hydrogen fuel cell cars will be the ultimate answer. Clean emissions (water), don't rely on fossil fuels. I hope that one day we have hydrogen generating units in our garages and we tell the Middle East to pound sand (which they have plenty of)

You would think that the government would be jumping through hoops to help GM make this happen. Tells you something about the power of the oil lobby.

 

[buickanddeere]

Where pray tell does the energy come from to make the hydrogen?
Do you know how many units energy you have to put into cracking 1lb of water?
How much energy you get back when burning the resulting H2 from 1 lb of water in an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell?

 

[buickanddeere]

Amish around here have the go head for anything 12V DC. They are putting up wind turbines or sollar cells and using LED lights at night.
The local Bishop is telling the Arabs keep their oil.

 

[LouNY]

The process of converting coal/ coal gas/ methane to a liquid hydrocarbon is called Fischer Tropsch, there are several operations and companies working on it in this county and overseas.
Lou

 

[Anonymous-0]

I'd like to tell something besides pound sand.(lol)