How Much Hydrogen In A Litre Of Diesel?

[OceanBreeze]

I thought there wasn't any oxygen in diesel..?

 

There isn’t. The oxygen comes from the air taken in during combustion.

[OceanBreeze]

Thanks. I'm not going to be dealing with this sort of thing again, otherwise I would have learned formulas etc., but as it's a one-off I just wanted to get the answer.

 

I sensed that all you wanted was a number and not a full tome on chemistry. That was kind of what my little joke was about in my first post. But nobody got it so not much of a joke, I will probably delete it.

[OceanBreeze]

Ha, fair enough. I'm actually working with a habitat restoration project, and I've been asked to research this without telling anyone why and it's the least favourite task I've had since joining! I don't suppose there's any chance you could let me know the grams of hydrogen in petrol & kerosene too..?

 

Would you mind explaining how this all fits into a habitat restoration project?

I am genuinely interested.

 

Meanwhile, I will try to answer your questions****:

 

Petrol and kerosene are both very complex mixtures and there isn’t one formula for either one unless you specify what specific mixture you are interested in.

 

For example, RP-1 is rocket propellant and it is a kerosene containing no less than 14 constituent fluids but it does have an approximate chemical formula of C11.8 H23.0 which is almost the same as what we have been using for diesel.

 

Not surprisingly then, the percentage of hydrogen by weight is almost the same as diesel at 14%

The density is about .8 making the amount of hydrogen/liter in grams nearly the same as diesel at 112 grams hydrogen/liter for kerosene.

 

As for petrol, there are so many blends that I am not sure where to start. Thankfully, you are not all that interested in the derivation, just a number, so I will use Octane as the basis.

Octane chemical formula is C8H18 and if you do the math that works out to 16% with a density of 0.7 yields 112 grams,  hydrogen/liter, a familiar number.

 

You didn’t ask about Biodiesel, but since that is a fuel I am very familiar with as we do burn it in our ship’s turbines, I will mention it also. I use No 1-B, ASTM 6751 which is 77% carbon, 12% hydrogen and 11% oxygen by weight. The specific gravity is 0.88 so 105.6 grams of hydrogen/liter

 

 

****Probably exchemist will be along and he will correct anything he does not agree with. Cheers

[FalconHoof]

Would you mind explaining how this all fits into a habitat restoration project?

I am genuinely interested.

 

My organisation uses sustainable housing to finance habitat creation & restoration, and we're looking at how viable micro-grids are. But, the clients are nit-picking over all the different fuel options and how ethical they all are. It's a bloody nuisance.

[Vmedvil2]

My organisation uses sustainable housing to finance habitat creation & restoration, and we're looking at how viable micro-grids are. But, the clients are nit-picking over all the different fuel options and how ethical they all are. It's a bloody nuisance.

I would go for Bio-diesel as the most "Green" fuel, literally that stuff is made very "Green" I used to work at a Bio-diesel plant and it's really "Green" synthesized. I can not tell you the process that we used as I am under contract to not tell however I can tell you it's "Green" and basically as long as you have the proper setup you can synthesize a infinite amount from Sulfuric Acid,Cooking Oil, and Methanol. We used to make about 1 billion dollars worth at 99.99% purity every year with a plant the size of a medium sized warehouse, it requires around 10 biochemists/engineers to synthesize correctly, 8 on day shift and 2 on night shift. I was the night-shift biochemist process operator, but that's what I did before I started my own company.

Edited April 28, 2020 by VictorMedvil

[OceanBreeze]

My organisation uses sustainable housing to finance habitat creation & restoration, and we're looking at how viable micro-grids are. But, the clients are nit-picking over all the different fuel options and how ethical they all are. It's a bloody nuisance.

 

 

That’s interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I think my curiosity concerned the emphasis on the hydrogen content of fuels, vis-à-vis habitat restoration. These days everyone seems focused on carbon content, of course, with all the attention given now to CO2 and other pollution products.

 

Hydrogen combustion, on the other hand, produces virtually no pollution but liberates more energy than carbon oxidation. That is why the amount of hydrogen, by weight, is so similar across all the fuels we examined. In fact, around 13.5% is usually considered the minimum recommended hydrogen content for efficient fuel combustion performance.

 

Anyway, hey good luck with your project, and with the nit-picking clients.