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Re: conversion factors



It is not surprising that the unprocessed oil
has a higher heat of combustion that the oil
we buy for heating homes. A lot of better fuel
is removed from the unprocessed oil in a
refinery to produce house heating oil. I see
nothing very wrong with 1bbl = 6.1 GJ.
Ludwik Kowalski


On Wednesday, Sep 8, 2004, at 16:09 America/New_York, Ludwik Kowalski
wrote:

Brian's number (1 barrel-->250 lb) corresponds
to 113 kg of oil. The heat of combustion of one
kind of house heating oil is 45200 kJ/kg. Therefore
one barrel of oil should release 5.1 GJ of thermal
energy. This would be consistent with 1bbl = 6.1 GJ
if the "official" (average) heat of combustion were
20% larger than 45200.
Ludwik Kowalski


On Wednesday, Sep 8, 2004, at 15:18 America/New_York, Ludwik Kowalski
wrote:

Concerning David's and Brian's messages:

It was not my typo. The book has it this way:

barrel of oil (bbl) = 6.1 GJ = 5.8 million Btu

I was puzzled by the 'bbl" instead of "boo"
but decided to pass what I see.

In any case, what is the correct number of
joules from one bbl? According to Rick
Tarara itis 41.9 GJ (instead of 6.1 above).
Can somebody confirm this?

Ludwik Kowalski

On Wednesday, Sep 8, 2004, at 13:24 America/New_York, Brian Whatcott
wrote:

At 09:00 AM 9/8/2004, you wrote:
Regarding Ludwik's conversion factors:

... Below
is a table of conversion factors given by
H. Geller in his 2003 "Energy Revolution:
Politics for a Sustainable Future" book.
...
1 TOE (ton of oil equivalent) = 4.19*10^9 J
=4.19 GJ

1 BBL (barrel of oil) = 6.1*10^9 J = 6.1 GJ
...

Ludwik, do you have a typo somewhere here or does Geller
really claim that a barrel of oil weighs about 3/2 ton?

David Bowman


No time to look it up - but a barrel looks like it might hold
40 gal - and a (US) gal of oil ought to weigh around 6 lb -
so a barrel might possibly be 250 lb hence 8 to the (US) ton
If 1 TOE is really 4.2E9 J then a barrel would comprise
maybe 5.4E8 J - this doesn't look right?



Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!