PAO properties compared to GTL? (Pennz PUP)

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Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Geez, get one of us to buy it here and send it over
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If I had to pay that kind of money for daily driver oil, I'd change it maybe every 5 years ... By-pass filtration would be a must
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Thanks but I have a few cans of my own 0W20, that I threw together in the lab in the garage waiting to be used up. It's 8 years old now but that's not a problem. Oil rarely goes off (well not the ones I blend!).

I only threw the cost of the Petronas oil in to illustrate that not everywhere in the world is as cheap as the US. If you think that was bad, get this...

Last September I took my wife's Suzuki into the dealers for it's two year service. You are sort of obliged to do this to maintain the warranty. Now my wife, bless her, won't drive more than ten miles in any given direction. In 12 months, the car has done all of 2,000 miles and that's only because occasionally I use it for a decently long run to charge the battery up. So the dealer services the car and presents me with a bill for £250 ($US 337.50)! I can't even blame it on the oil because from empty to full, the car's tiny 1.0 litre engine takes 3.7 litres of oil. This is kind of normal here.
 
They both have a powerful state partner that nudged XOM to sell gas … via high profit LNG contracts with important commitments = so important you’ll get penalized if not making volume targets … lube oil step aside please …
 
Originally Posted By: 4WD
They both have a powerful state partner that nudged XOM to sell gas … via high profit LNG contracts with important commitments = so important you’ll get penalized if not making volume targets … lube oil step aside please …


Yup, and XOM has a lot of gas investment and partnerships in the region. Their north field development is significant IIRC. I think they thought lube oil was going to be a thing, until the price starting coming in, and then it wasn't. Shell has aptly demonstrated what the true cost is, and it is truly staggering.
 
I had a couple of significant roles on Marathon's Garyville Expansion project last decade. We essentially built a grass roots 250,000 barrel per day conventional petroleum refinery with hydrocracker & coker for medium to heavy crudes in parallel tied in with the existing 275,000 BPD refinery with FCCU & coker, for $4 billion. No lubes production, the hydrocracker unconverted oil is fed to the FCCU where it readily cracks to fuels and petrochemicals, but say we even throw in another whole $1 billion for a state of the art lubes facility, that would be $5 billion.

Shell's Pearl GTL facility produces about 120,000 BPD of products including around 25,000 BPD of lube base stock for about $25 billion capital cost thus far - half the production volume for 5 times the cost. Even with free natural gas both for feedstock and utilities to eliminate big chunks of variable operating cost, the difference of an incremental $20 billion for half the production volume can't be ignored and just buried in other corporate line items. That's equal to BP's Gulf of Mexico incident settlement!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes....-3-billion/amp/


And yes what we call FCCU Light Cycle Oil on this side of the pond will already have its cetane upgraded as part of the hydroprocessing to get the sulfur levels down to Western ULSD specs so the value of the 70 cetane GTL distillate is limited as SOJ notes. You realoy need an ultra low sulfur but otherwise poor quality = low cost / value distillate source to nlend with to maximize GTL diesel value.

SOJ, gas oil over here refers to FCCU & some hydrocrackers feed not products, a generic catch-all for material too light to be asphalt but too heavy to be diesel. We have atmospheric gas oil, light vacuum gas oil, heavy vacuum gas oil, some configurations also produce a medium vacuum gas oil, and coker gas oil. Extraction units produce deasphalted oil.

FCCU products are typically called FCC LPG, FCC Gasoline which can have seperate Light and Heavy draws depending on configuration, FCC Light Cycle Oil, some folks pull a FCCU Heavy Cycle Oil but most just use this as a pumparound, and FCCU Slurry Oil - with of course some regional differences in terms here!

Nothing like lack of common language to foster greater Anglo-American understanding and communication!
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
That is dependent on location though, here in the US a 0W-XX oil is still relatively inexpensive. Especially with extended drains the overall incremental cost over the lifetime of the vehicle is negligible, particularly so if you do your own work.


Harvest King Fully Synthetic SAE 0W-20 Motor Oil 1.25 Gallon

5 quart jug for $9.99

https://www.ruralking.com/oil-hk-0w20-full-synthetic-5qt.html
 
Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
I had a couple of significant roles on Marathon's Garyville Expansion project last decade. We essentially built a grass roots 250,000 barrel per day conventional petroleum refinery with hydrocracker & coker for medium to heavy crudes in parallel tied in with the existing 275,000 BPD refinery with FCCU & coker, for $4 billion. No lubes production, the hydrocracker unconverted oil is fed to the FCCU where it readily cracks to fuels and petrochemicals, but say we even throw in another whole $1 billion for a state of the art lubes facility, that would be $5 billion.

Shell's Pearl GTL facility produces about 120,000 BPD of products including around 25,000 BPD of lube base stock for about $25 billion capital cost thus far - half the production volume for 5 times the cost. Even with free natural gas both for feedstock and utilities to eliminate big chunks of variable operating cost, the difference of an incremental $20 billion for half the production volume can't be ignored and just buried in other corporate line items. That's equal to BP's Gulf of Mexico incident settlement!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes....-3-billion/amp/


And yes what we call FCCU Light Cycle Oil on this side of the pond will already have its cetane upgraded as part of the hydroprocessing to get the sulfur levels down to Western ULSD specs so the value of the 70 cetane GTL distillate is limited as SOJ notes. You realoy need an ultra low sulfur but otherwise poor quality = low cost / value distillate source to nlend with to maximize GTL diesel value.

SOJ, gas oil over here refers to FCCU & some hydrocrackers feed not products, a generic catch-all for material too light to be asphalt but too heavy to be diesel. We have atmospheric gas oil, light vacuum gas oil, heavy vacuum gas oil, some configurations also produce a medium vacuum gas oil, and coker gas oil. Extraction units produce deasphalted oil.

FCCU products are typically called FCC LPG, FCC Gasoline which can have seperate Light and Heavy draws depending on configuration, FCC Light Cycle Oil, some folks pull a FCCU Heavy Cycle Oil but most just use this as a pumparound, and FCCU Slurry Oil - with of course some regional differences in terms here!

Nothing like lack of common language to foster greater Anglo-American understanding and communication!



Yes. Light Cycle Oil. 40 cetane number, very high density. I knew that. Obviously I've been away from refining for too long.

We used to burn a lot of FCCU slurry oil on our furnaces. Have a vague recollection that the aluminium cat fines in it used to eat through John Zink burner tips like a knife through hot butter! Happy days...
 
Originally Posted By: SonofJoe

We used to burn a lot of FCCU slurry oil on our furnaces. Have a vague recollection that the aluminium cat fines in it used to eat through John Zink burner tips like a knife through hot butter! Happy days...


Whoah!
shocked.gif
 
A bit off topic...years back, some genius in corporate was conned into paying money for petrocoke for one of the power stations.

"Only 20,000 tonnes. And price per MJ was very attractive." (we burned 10,000 TPD of regular coal).

Problem was that it came in a couple of truck per day, and was mixed with coal, which shouldn't have been a problem (wasn't from combustion standpoint)...but even in small concentrations, it triggered the metal detectors and shut off the belts. We had to put the metal detectors in bypass, and then have the milling plant cope with the detritis that the coal mine sent.

Was a painful and costly cheap fuel.

So what set the metal detectors off ?
 
Tramp iron, and nickel & vanadium organometallic compounds present in crude oil. These compounds are very important for life on this planet as they are key to the photosynthesis process and are a legacy of crude oil once having been living matter. They also irreversibly poison refining catalysts, hence you see the term metals rejection in my discussions with SOJ. Petroleum coke is the "bottom of the barrel" where these naturally occuring compounds get concentrated. For refineries without cokers, the asphalt and heavy fuel oil is where the lion's share of these compounds are concentrated. This is why a coker is pretty much essential to any heavy crude oil processing as the heavier the crude the higher the metals from natural concentration effects. All sorts of distillation and cracking methods as well as in some cases solvent extraction are employed to squeeze the most out of the crude oil and a coker is the final brute force thermal cracking to solid residue without a catalyst to guide selectivity of the reactions.
 
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FCCU LCO tends to be quite aromatic and lower than 40 cetane which is why something like GTL distillate would make a good blendstock with its high cetane rating. But now the FCC LCO needs to be hydrotreated to lower the sulfur to ULSD standards in much of the world, which improves cetane through aromatics saturation, which lowers density, contributing to "refiner's gain" where volume of the liquid producs is greater than that of the liquid feedstocks.

Both cetane rating and octane rating are set up where higher number is better, but opposite from a chemistry perspective. Octane rating values resistance to pre-ignition by a spark, so aromatics and highly branched hydrocarbons have high octane values. Cetane rating is set up so higher numbers reflect ease of ignition once injected in a system with no spark, timing solely controlled by the fuel injectors, so aromatics yield low cetane rating.

FCCU slurry oil is pretty unique in all the natural vanadium & nickel in the feed oil is captured on the catalyst so the oil itself is really metals free except for solid catalyst fines entrained in the oil. FCCU catalyst resistance to attrition, reactor catalyst retention equipment efficiency, and seperation process have become much better, and high quality FCCU slurry oil is valued for carbon black production feedstock due to the hydrocarbon portion being so well demetallized, unlike feed to a standard refinery coker. So from a philosophical standpoint burning it in fuel oil is similar to burning recycled motor oil in fuel oil.
 
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Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Originally Posted By: Cujet
Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
The "Synthetic" guys just don't get that they have a significant percentage of dino as a carrier for the add pak


And yet conventional oil continues to result in stuck piston rings, clogged oil ring drain holes, coked turbo and oil lines, along with the associated varnish and sludge.

The quality synthetics avoid all of this.


See here's the problem I have with that premise. We have coked turbos - really with correctly configured drains? How about all the millions of OTR trucks with turbos running cherry red on good old dino HDEO with OCI at 20,000 miles ... Clogged oil ring drains, seems to be related to some makes and to a world of Jiffy Lube oil changes. Are you sure that would have happened on a premium dino, or just bulk oil ...

There are obviously good dinos (Delo, Delvac, etc.) and bad dinos. There are good synthetics and I'm sure there are bad ones too. Up to the operator to buy the appropriate oil. Just the synthetic is not going to protect anyone ...


It's not an apples to apples comparison. Diesel exhaust temperature is hundreds of degrees less than turbocharged gasoline engine exhaust.
 
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Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Originally Posted By: Cujet
Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
The "Synthetic" guys just don't get that they have a significant percentage of dino as a carrier for the add pak


And yet conventional oil continues to result in stuck piston rings, clogged oil ring drain holes, coked turbo and oil lines, along with the associated varnish and sludge.

The quality synthetics avoid all of this.


See here's the problem I have with that premise. We have coked turbos - really with correctly configured drains? How about all the millions of OTR trucks with turbos running cherry red on good old dino HDEO with OCI at 20,000 miles ... Clogged oil ring drains, seems to be related to some makes and to a world of Jiffy Lube oil changes. Are you sure that would have happened on a premium dino, or just bulk oil ...

There are obviously good dinos (Delo, Delvac, etc.) and bad dinos. There are good synthetics and I'm sure there are bad ones too. Up to the operator to buy the appropriate oil. Just the synthetic is not going to protect anyone ...


But those OTR truck motors are designed and built to a cost standard well beyond the cheapies we have in our cars.
No light duty engine is going to do a million hard miles on any oil.
Engines intended for OTR trucks do this routinely and their cost reflects this.
 
Originally Posted by Linctex
I sure do learn a lot from y'all - - I love the technical discussions.

I'm curious:
After this thread (Mobil 1 AnnProt primarily 0w-20 based thread)
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/4622850/


I would like to know:
How does primarily PAO-based 0W-20 or 5w-20 (Mobil 1 EP or AP?) oil properties compared to GTL? (Pennz P.U.P. 0W-20 or 5w-20)

There's a lot to consider....HTHS, NOACK, etc. etc.....

I know it's impossible to determine anti-wear additive recipes, etc. etc. etc....

.
.
I'm not really concerned about "everyday, light-duty commuter work".
I wonder how they would do in "extreme/severe duty" (very high piston ring temps, for example)

Any thoughts?

PAO is far better than GTL, which is considerably better than Group III, which is better than Group II.

However, M1 AP 5W-30 is not PAO.

The only PAO oils I know are M1 EP 0W-20, M1 AP 0W-20, M1 0W-16, and Amsoil SS.

Check the MSDS or my BOQI lists when you're in doubt.
 
Originally Posted by kschachn
Originally Posted by SonofJoe
Just checked...

Here in the UK, a 5 litre (5.3 US quarts) can of Petronas Synthium 0W20 (what the dealer puts in my Suzuki) costs �59 ($US 79.65) from Euro Car Parts. Think this is Group III and not even PAO! I personally would regard that as expensive.

PS - I know it's cheaper off eBay but you never know what it is you're actually buying...

Yeah, here for Mobil 1 0W-whatever it is about 1/3 that cost at Walmart. Even Canada has significantly higher prices.


LOL, I took a photo of a jug of 0W40 at Walmart over there in 2014...came home, and a litre of the same was more in $Aus than the US jug. It's now $110 retail.

Looking at the CAFE (NHTSA) docs for the costs of economy "upgrades", they give the cost of advanced low viscosity oils per vehicle BUYER a small handful of dollars premium for the benefit, doesn't factor in the ongoing costs...with my fuel costs, and maybe a 2% gain, the fuel saving is $40 over a 15,000km oil change...making it a break even deal over the interval.


Back in the day (mid 80s), I worked in a Shell servo...

Shell had a product "XMO", a 15W30, based on their "XHVI - mineral with the performance of a synthetic.

If I knew then what I've learned over the last 30 years, I should have been all over that.

https://prodepc.blob.core.windows.net/epcblobstorage/GPCDOC_GTDS_XHVI_8.2.pdf
http://www.cpchem.com/bl/pao/en-us/tdslibrary/Synfluid PAO 8 cSt.pdf

As to the buy it and ship it, there's an Oz distributor of US lubes that I but from...last case of Redline gear lubes was $280 Oz.
 
Originally Posted by Gokhan

PAO is far better than GTL, which is considerably better than Group III, which is better than Group II.

However, M1 AP 5W-30 is not PAO.

The only PAO oils I know are M1 EP 0W-20, M1 AP 0W-20, M1 0W-16, and Amsoil SS.

Check the MSDS or my BOQI lists when you're in doubt.


Only if you are fixated on CCS/Pour Point, and have built a "BOQI" around it which becomes a self fulfilling screening system.

The Shell, VII free 15W30, In Australia would have scored poorly on your BOQI, as it was a 15W...

As far as what was actually needed in Oz for economy, and longevity, CCS at -40C is utterly meaningless.
 
Originally Posted by Shannow
The Shell, VII free 15W30, In Australia would have scored poorly on your BOQI, as it was a 15W...

As far as what was actually needed in Oz for economy, and longevity, CCS at -40C is utterly meaningless.

It's ~ 1/(NOACK*CCS). So, not necessarily low BOQI. PPPP 10W-30 scored very high (65). Their 7.6 cSt GTL has 2.0% NOACK.

VII-free GTL xW-30? I doubt it. I don't think they make thicker GTL than the 7.6 cSt.

http://abpetrochem.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/AB-BOOKLET-2018NEWEST-VERSION.pdf
 
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