Environmental comparison of straight run diesel and cracked diesel

Diesel is produced conventionally by distilling crude oil which also results in lower value heavy distillates. Recently, complex refineries have higher value-added diesel from these heavy distillates. However, this requires additional energy. Hence, it is interesting to evaluate what effect the economic value addition has on the use of non-renewable resources and greenhouse gas emissions. This study was conducted to compare the gate-to-gate energy related impacts i.e. Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Abiotic resource Depletion Potential (ADP) between straight run diesel (S-HSD), produced by a simple refinery and cracked diesel (C-HSD), produced by a complex. The results showed that the C-HSD required more energy than the S-HSD because of the energy used by the additional processes. 1 L of the S-HSD generated 0.048 kg CO2 eq while that of the C-HSD generated 0.372 kg CO2 eq. In contrast, the C-HSD has a lower ADP than the S-HSD proving that the production of diesel from the heavy distillate indeed helps conserve natural resources. 1 L of the S-HSD generated 0.022 kg Sb eq. while that of the C-HSD generated 0.017 kg Sb eq. Producing the C-HSD helps conserve natural resources but has higher GWP than the S-HSD. However, there are possibilities to reduce GHG emissions from the C-HSD production by energy efficiency improvement.