The method needed to make oil is very simple and not even something that can be patented so is it just too easy to be something to make money doing that keeps it from being done? What is the problem with making oil from some of the trash we not dump in landfills and/or biomass?
2007-11-27 05:11:24 · 7 answers · asked by jim m 5 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Engineering
Why make oil when we have enough in the Continental US to last 300 years if the libs would just let us go and get it.
2007-11-27 06:48:50 · answer #1 · answered by oliver_a2002 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
What 'Method' are you referring to? Crude oil was made with dead organisms under intense pressure and extreme temperatures. The high energy level of those conditions forced the intricate bonding that you see in crude oil and that is why we are able to use it as fuel. Not because we created the energy, but because the energy was already there, we just unleashed it for our own ends.
BTW: we use those same crude oil distillates to fuel the refineries that separate the oil into commodities like gasoline and heating oil. Just in case you were wondering what we 'burned' to make gasoline.
2007-11-27 05:30:53 · answer #2 · answered by Sithlord78 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The problem is the amount of energy you'd have to put into it - betwen forcing the chemical reactions to happen and flitering the good stuff out of the trash, you migh get one barrel of oil out for every ten you spent on the process.
You get energy out when you burn oil - it has to go in somewhere.
Kind of like that ancient Superman episode where the goofy scientist figured out how to make gold - using platinum as the raw material.
2007-11-27 06:08:24 · answer #3 · answered by Tom V 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The "oil" you're referring to, crude oil, was formed millions of years ago by a biological process that in all likelihood will never happen again. Essentially, crude oil is million-year-old sunlight, the energy that all those living organisms gathered over their lifetimes. Extracting energy from waste in the form of methane gas is going on now but it is nowhere near being able to supply all of our energy needs. You can't "make" crude oil. It just happened and the present supply is all there is ever going to be.
2007-11-27 05:21:03 · answer #4 · answered by kevpet2005 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If ''making oil is very simple''it would have been done by now.Recycled trash to produce oil is very inefficent.But if we could take the basic molecular structure of oil and combine all the atoms that make up that molecule,and reconstitute them into an oil molecule,we would be on our way to oil independence.
2007-11-27 05:25:41 · answer #5 · answered by just thinking 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Part of the problem is that it takes more energy to create hydrocarbons (oil, gas, etc) from hydrogen and carbon than can be released from burning them after they are created. Where is the energy to create hydrocarbons going to come from?
What's the point in creating a chemical bond to store energy (hydrogen-carbon bonds) when it takes more energy to create them, than you get using them.
If that energy came from some renewable source like solar energy, then it might be feasible to do what you suggest, but we are a 'ways' off from having any practical commercially viable system to create hydrocarbons from 'scratch'.
.
2007-11-27 05:20:25 · answer #6 · answered by tlbs101 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There you go champ. You have all the answers right in your hand. Why don't you go and do it if it is so easy? Obviously you have invented something that short circuits reality, removes the bonds of the energy and matter conservation laws and will light our cities forever and make our cars run on water.
Since you are so sure that it can be done, why don't you just do it yourself and become the richest man on the planet in six months flat?
Why?
:-)
2007-11-27 05:20:07 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋