The cost of fuel

The production costs of typical fuels, and their actual cost at the pump, seem to be inverse proportional.

Do you know the difference between high octane, and low octane fuel? High octane is LESS flammable. So, in other words, to go from the less expensive low octane gas, to the more expensive higher octane... They add water. (Or some other "low-volatile" liquid.)

Do you know the difference between the more expensive diesel fuel, and the less expensive gasoline? They stop refining the oil, earlier, to get diesel. (And a bunch of additives are added to the gasoline, that aren't put in the diesel.) IOW: It is less expensive to actually produce diesel than it is to produce gasoline. Yet the diesel is more expensive???!!

Gas prices around me are normally in the rage of $3.79 - $4.13. Diesel has its good and bad days, most days diesel will be a few cents cheaper than gas but other days it cost more than gas. In the end around me Diesel is cheaper because it is almost always cheaper than gas

I have been corrected elsewhere.

Apparently they do not add a less volatile liquid to make higher octane gasoline.

I am waiting to find out what they DO do to make the gasoline less volatile...

Octane is heightened by increasing the number of branches in the hydrocarbon molecules, called isomerization. This requires either buying high-grade refinery blendstocks, or adding expensive isomerization units to the refinery's processing chain. This does cost the refinery quite a bit more. Many additives very easily increase octane (such as leaded gas, tetra-ethyl lead) but are widely banned or regulated for environmental or health reasons which is why such expensive methods are used.

Lead is best gas.

WellThatsSurprising wrote:

Octane is heightened by increasing the number of branches in the hydrocarbon molecules, called isomerization. This requires either buying high-grade refinery blendstocks, or adding expensive isomerization units to the refinery's processing chain. This does cost the refinery quite a bit more.  Many additives very easily increase octane (such as leaded gas, tetra-ethyl lead) but are widely banned or regulated for environmental or health reasons which is why such expensive methods are used.

Thank you.

I love learning! And am happy to be wrong if it means I have learned something.  

Doug Fackler wrote:

Lead is best gas.

I read somewhere that since lead has been abolished, the children growing up have become less aggressive and faster learners.

I dunno, I think we have become dumber.

true. People are becoming softer..

Angchor wrote:

Do you know the difference between high octane, and low octane fuel? High octane is LESS flammable.

Yep- https://www.atltf.com/t2869-high-octane-fact-and-fiction

Angchor wrote:

Do you know the difference between the more expensive diesel fuel, and the less expensive gasoline? They stop refining the oil, earlier, to get diesel. (And a bunch of additives are added to the gasoline, that aren't put in the diesel.) IOW: It is less expensive to actually produce diesel than it is to produce gasoline. Yet the diesel is more expensive???!!

That, my friend, is called "dickery". Well- that's the POLITE version of it. They KNOW the trucking industry lives on diesel. More efficent? Charge more! Diesel efficiency luring automobile drivers away from gasoline? Charge more! People still heating using the stuff? You got it! Charge more!

Doug Fackler wrote:

I dunno, I think we have become dumber.

We most certainly have! Well, in what we'll commonly refer to the Western World, anyways. Our respective educational systems have gone to the dogs...

Woof.

Doc Sprocket wrote:

Yep- https://www.atltf.com/t2869-high-octane-fact-and-fiction

Thank you!