The other reason ULSD costs so much more is the process used to remove the sulfur simply replaces the sulfur ions in the fuel with hydrogen ions. The crux is that the hydrogen ions have to come from somewhere and at most refineries they come from natural gas. So, the refinery has to buy natural gas not only to fuel their furnaces and boilers but to provide hydrogen for their hydrotreater. On top of this, they used to be able to sell the sulfur they extracted from crude but now there is so much of it the market has gone to **** and they may have to start paying to dispose it. "There ain't no free lunch."
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Originally Posted by Iowachild
I am going to pass along some information that people may or may not be interested in and with the qualifier that I am only speaking of the fuel that comes from the refinery that I work for.
Home heating oil is a very different product from ULSD. It still has a relatively high sulfur content, I cannot say for sure the exact ppm but it is higher that even LSD was. Many years ago you could say home heating oil and diesel fuel were the same. NOT ANY MORE! It also has the addition of a yellow marker dye that is not visible to the naked eye which became required by some government agency. It requires some sort of scanner to ascertain if it is in the fuel. The dye is called Unimark. (Scroll down the page to find Uinmark) The bill of laden for home heating oil clearly states it is not to be used as any sort of motor fuel.
All of our off-road diesel fuel is ULSD with the addition of the visible red dye.
I will also say when we switched our distillate hydrotreater over in April 2006 to make ULSD instead of LSD it required a large financial investment in equipment modifications and a change of catalyst in the reactor. I can not remember what I heard the new catalyst cost, but it was very, very expensive. We are shutting down the DHT again in two weeks to change the catalyst again as it has reached the end on its useful life. For comparison, the catalyst used to make LSD had a life of 10 to 12 years and was not as expensive. What I am saying is the government requirement to make diesel fuel with 15 ppm or less sulfur is most likely the reason diesel fuel costs so much more than gasoline now.
Hopefully some of you find this helpful. |