From asphalt to motor oil, birthday candles to polyester shirts, a recent infographic on JWN Energy lists the 17 products that come out of a barrel of oil.
“It’s a real industrial horn of plenty,” JWN states. “The lighter materials in a barrel are used mainly for paint thinners and dry-cleaning solvents, and they can make nearly a quart of one of these products. The miscellaneous fraction of what is left still contains enough products to be used in medicinal oils, still gas, road oil, and plant condensates.”
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But advocates of a trillion-dollar bio-economy argue that much the same range of products can flow from wood and agricultural waste and dedicated bio-product crops (while sidestepping the drawbacks associated with corn-based biofuels). This conference in Ottawa in mid-November will dig into the details.
