Proposal: Power Teams

[Gelrir]

Here's an actual "skid-mounted" refinery: http://www.peiyangchem.com/modular-r...-refinery.html

There are a couple of options that I can't quite sort out there from their website, but the nice picture of nine 40' ocean cargo containers has weights:

• pipelines and metal structures: 9190 kg
• cooling unit, metal structures, process pumping units: 8650 kg
• evaporator unit, corrosion inhibitor unit, separator with maintenance platform: 8410 kg
• metal structures, process pumps unit 2: 6230 kg
• furnace unit, black-box stairs: 11835 kg
• metal structures, heat exchangers unit, boxes with valves and fittings: 10715 kg
• black box, condensing unit: 8320 kg
• column K-2: 3230 kg
• column K-1: 3420 kg

total: 70,000 kg (suspiciously round!). This is probably their MR5 refinery, which has a capacity of 500 barrels per day (crude oil input), requires 100 kilowatts of power, takes 4 months to assemble, covers one or two acres once assembled. The "user" will also have to clear and level the refinery site, build roads, provide a lot of concrete for foundations, sources of water for cooling and fire-fighting, provide buildings (control, lab, shop, office, etc.; most probably converted from the ocean cargo containers once emptied), storage tanks or pipelines for crude oil and the various products, a truck loading rack, electrical power supply, area lighting, fire protection system including hydrants, compressed air supply, compressed nitrogen supply, and water treatment (or just dump it, if you're that kind of villain). Also the listed components do NOT include the tools, cranes, scaffolding, etc. to assemble the refinery.

Thus for a Morrow Project "refinery in boxes", you might add 11 ocean cargo containers as follows:

• electrical power, presumably fusion
• compressed air (compressor, lots of fittings and pipe)
• nitrogen production and compression
• water supply fittings including fire protection
• electrical power distribution, and lighting
• water treatment (inbound)
• waste water treatment
• storage tank and pipeline fittings
• office, lab, shop and control building fittings, porta-potties, light bulbs, etc.
• trailer spares (mostly wheels and tires)
• installation and construction office and shop (i.e., not stuffed to the roof with equipment), including all the manuals and plans

... so a total of 20 containers. The company states in their literature, "The unit allows a single operator to restart the plant from a cold start in less than four hours and have the plant in full operation." -- this kind of implies not a lot of staff on-site once it's running. Oil refineries do NOT like to be shut down -- if everything cools down you get heavy, cold sludge in all your pipes!

500 barrels per day of crude oil becomes 37,000 liters of gasoline, 22,000 liters of diesel, 7,500 liters of kerosene, and various other petro-chem products.

For the Morrow Project, three big engineering teams would have to participate in getting this going, presuming the civil economy hadn't recovered to provide these functions:

• heavy transport team (semi-tractors, cargo container trailers, shop/repair vehicle)
• at least one Recon or MARS team during transport and construction, as security
• civil engineering team (access and road repair to the site, cement mixing, trenching, grading, obtaining water supply, building foundations, fencing and camp construction, and other site prep)
• construction engineering team (with forklifts, cranes, welders, lots of heavy labor) -- at least 50 people, the company doesn't provide any info on labor force involved in any stage of construction.

A two-axle semi-trailer tanker might hold 5,000 gallons (19,000 liters); so (in very rough terms) if all export is by trailer, the refinery would send out two trailers of gasoline, one of diesel, and half of a tanker of jet fuel.

Thoughts?

--
Michael B.