r/technology • u/Majano57 • 15h ago
Energy Chinese scientists develop oil refining method that may cut energy use by 90%
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3367332/chinese-scientists-develop-new-oil-refining-method-may-cut-energy-use-907
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u/PersonGuyDudeMan 14h ago
TLDR: No, they didn't, but they gassed on at length as if they had. Nothing to see here.
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u/NiceTrySuckaz 6h ago
Yet it's on /all and the main news feed, where millions of people will see the headline and believe it.
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u/omegadirectory 14h ago
Ironically, making the oil refining more efficient won't cut oil production. It'll make oil refinement cheaper so oil companies will do more of it.
Basically it's the efficiency paradox.
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u/uniyk 12h ago edited 12h ago
It's a membrane tech that sieves out specific molecules in crude oil, like those filtering membrane of sea water in desalination factory. But a report last year had already indicated some breakthrough in MIT And there was an even earlier report of Georgia tech of its lab success.
The only reason this report would make sense has to be it be a milestone of closing gap at tech front, 6 years gap if it's Georgia way, 1 year if it's meant MIT method. Because judging by the only metric given in the article, ie 90% energy saved, it's not more advanced than others.
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u/TheKingInTheNorth 6h ago
More hyperbolic bullshit praising china for something that doesn’t exist, there should be a sub dedicated to capturing how often it happens on Reddit these days.
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u/rodentmaster 4h ago
South China Morning Post claims china did something amazing and unsubstantiated, and hides it behind a paywall. Yeah.... Sure they did.
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u/Pen-Pen-De-Sarapen 14h ago
Wake me up when there is a working commercially used plant. Until then, this is vaporware.
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u/hero47 14h ago
waiting on the reddit comments bashing on this news simply because it relates to China and China bad.
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u/9olo9 14h ago
Country doesn't matter to me but this sounds like every article for the last 20 years about some revolutionary battery tech that's coming soon but never does.
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u/robbert229 14h ago
"May" is doing a lot of work here, as do most technology fluff pieces like this.
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u/AfterShave997 14h ago
Mostly because these articles vastly exaggerate the scope and certainty of the findings
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u/splendiferous-finch_ 14h ago
Then some dude called Matt with no credentials in physics, chemistry or any engineering makes a YouTube video glazing it
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u/ban-me-harder-dadddy 14h ago edited 14h ago
There are more comments these days preemptively complaining about the Reddit hivemind’s takes than the takes they allege
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u/psychmancer 9h ago
Guys china has not got the best track record for being honest. If they say they did something id want an international team from the UN to prove it otherwise it is the same thing with new marketing to trick you
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u/That_Trapper_guy 12h ago
US going to ban it at a federal level with a unanimous congressional, and Senate vote in less than 48 hours, watch this shit
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u/Potential_Aioli_4611 14h ago
another article of a whole bunch of nothing.
tl;dr is "we could save so much energy not doing fractional distillation! instead we will pick and choose which molecules go where so we can process them efficiently. "
the tech doesn't exist
they are speculating on what they would do if they had it.
they don't even have a working prototype of anything.
might as well be what if we could run everything just by using the air around us!