Bunker Fuel? What?
In my last post, I mentioned that the spill isn’t just oil, but bunker fuel. What’s bunker fuel?
It’s the stuff that runs big engines, like in an oil tanker or cargo ship. And it’s cheap, which is why these high volume users use it.
Last year, I interviewed Dave Culp, an engineer who designs ship sails (he started Kiteship), and we talked a little about bunker fuel. According to him, this is residual fuel–stuff that’s “left over after everything’s distilled out of crude. So sulfur, palladium, iron, even sand stays in the stuff that gets sold and burned in these ships. There’s 900 times as much sulfur in a gallon of residual fuel than in gasoline.”
“But ships don’t really have a choice because the industry is built around this cheap, plentiful fuel source,” he added.
It’s highly viscous. Imagine this thick, black, grainy shit. That’s what’s out there, in addition to the lighter gas or oil that’s slicking on the surface and covering the birds. Sfist is doing a good job of updating what’s happening on the beaches, where I’ve not made it yet. But I figure that’s what has washed up on shore, as seen in this photo from Sfist:
Filed under: beach, energy, environment, journalism, San Francisco, unfortunate
Tags: Bay Area, beach, disasterful
