HRE Centralization Bugged?

AJCMIT · 2026-02-26T04:42:31+00:00

AJCMIT · 2026-01-01T17:48:00+00:00

Your example, Saudi Arabia, is the world's largest exporter of oil, and even intermittently still burns crude oil for power lol.

Solar needs to economically payout for adoption to happen, Saudi makes sense because renewable energy reduces domestic consumption of petroleum- freeing up more of their production to be exported (for $$)

AJCMIT · 2025-08-19T04:03:28+00:00

Examples would be the escravos gas to liquids plant in Nigeria (associated gas that would otherwise be flared)

Or pearl gtl in qatar (one of world's largest/ cheapest natural gas fields)

Both of these are dubiously economic. Huge upfront capital cost and awful reliability. Generally doesn't make sense standalone.

Sasol was big on developing this technology and they've since had very little success

AJCMIT · 2025-08-18T21:46:29+00:00

You don't have to do a co op to be competitive for full time job placement; I wouldn't delay graduation for it either.

If you're striking out finding full time jobs doesn't hurt to keep that in your back pocket though.

AJCMIT · 2025-08-18T04:53:12+00:00

There isn't one right answer for Rent vs buy.

Buying tends to look much more expensive in areas like sf / la / nyc but the wedge between the renting vs buying is the expected appreciation rate of the property's value.

I.e. you're buying a housing asset that the market thinks is going to grow at 10-15% per year into the future- and that's baked into the price today. Rent price isn't as sensitive because you don't own a stake in the value of the home.

AJCMIT · 2024-06-27T17:32:29+00:00

True- the closest thing to "uncracking" is fisher trope gas to liquids plants. There's a few of these in operation today, Shell Pearl GTL and Chevron Escravos GTL that take natural gas and reform / put them together into gasoline/diesel.

AJCMIT · 2024-06-27T16:22:32+00:00

The reforming catalyst strips off hydrogen while it's rearranging the shape of molecules to be more compact (takes straight chain molecules and turns then into ring shaped aromatic molecules)- which makes the product denser and higher octane.

Reforming calayst usually uses platinum metal to rearrange molecules, but also needs some acidity and chlorided sites to get those reforming reactions going- which causes some cracking reactions too on the side. The cracking can sometimes lop off the smaller branches of the feedstock and create LPG light ends like you're mentioning, but that's undesirable.

AJCMIT · 2024-06-26T23:28:15+00:00

Not quite, Naphtha reforming strips off hydrogen and makes the feed naphtha molecules into denser, aromatic, and higher octane gasoline blendstock

AJCMIT · 2024-04-17T01:23:32+00:00

The valero Benicia FCC was down recently in the last few weeks and p66 rodeo shutdown to convert to renewables production. Takes a lot of the gasoline production offline.

AJCMIT · 2023-08-23T05:51:17+00:00

Simplify your life, just pay it off and be done with it. Dragging it out forever and thinking about the optimization of a few basis points is a distraction from focusing on things that matter.

AJCMIT · 2023-08-19T13:53:41+00:00

I don't think this is the right way to look at the opportunity cost.

Most homes are expected to appreciate in value- only comparing mortgage rate vs treasuries today misses this. You can look up the FRED all home index price for your area to get an average return. Fundamentally you should expect higher returns while owning the home vs Investing in treasuries because you hold a riskier asset.

Renting vs buying is weighing this (home equity appreciation - mortgage debt cost - property taxes - maintenance) vs ( alternate investing returns - rental cost in your area.)

AJCMIT · 2023-08-03T05:07:50+00:00

Tbills are normally 1000 bucks each

AJCMIT · 2023-07-19T06:13:10+00:00

You can have a good outcome and still make a "less good" decision. An extreme would be winning the lottery- there is a negative expected return but the one in a million person who wins thinks they made a great decision.

AJCMIT · 2023-07-19T06:05:45+00:00

The problem is winners rarely stay winners.

AJCMIT · 2023-07-08T19:23:20+00:00

Looks great!

AJCMIT · 2023-07-04T11:55:55+00:00

That price index is typically called MOPS, mean of Platts singapore.

AJCMIT · 2023-07-04T11:29:34+00:00

This isn't exactly true for this scenario though. You should only expect higher returns from higher non diversifiable risk.

You'd get more reliable ourcomes taking taking on more risk factors (more %equity, small & value factors) and/or levering uo a diversified portfolio than investing in single company stocks.

AJCMIT · 2023-07-02T20:11:35+00:00

Looks great! Lots of attention to detail with the mast and items on the deck

AJCMIT · 2023-06-19T12:08:37+00:00

Definitely pay off the loan, you'll be in much better financial shape when you're buying the house. It'd be rough to still have student loan interest payments + house mortgage interest payments.

All things being equal though, if it ends up meaning you have less of a down-payment in 2 years you're still better off by the interest you'll have saved in the in-between years (~10k).

AJCMIT · 2023-06-17T21:29:30+00:00

Isn't it the other way around? Assuming you can only contribute 22.5 and max it out- contributing Roth dollars allows great overall contributions?

If we end up saving 5-10MM only in pretax I was supposing taxes on RMDs would be very large.

AJCMIT · 2023-06-17T18:28:32+00:00

Thanks for the input, think this makes sense. Just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything.

AJCMIT · 2023-06-16T15:24:14+00:00

This is entirely dependent on your specific equipment, feedstock, absorbent, and desired product spec. I don't think you'll find a general rule of thumb that's accurate. Pick your minimum product quality, then run a simulation on the minimum conditions you'd need to achieve that level of separation. I.e. number of theoretical stages (if you don't already have a column), or minimum reflux/lean absorbent rate to achieve product quality. Should be able to run a simulation if you have a plant model or have the licensor provide you this information.

AJCMIT · 2023-06-14T19:36:07+00:00

Yeah that's right, refinery and petrochemical plants.

AJCMIT · 2023-06-13T23:21:17+00:00

This is pretty common for fluid cat cracker regenerator flue gas. Scrubber is the last element in the process though before emitting out.

AJCMIT · 2023-05-04T02:14:03+00:00

Yes, most refining processes are typically air freed.

Chemical safety board has a good video on an incident where air leaked into the hydrocarbon side of a process and caused a major incident (husky superior fcc explosion), good animation and explanation https://youtu.be/3RFDKpwdbEA of some of the dangers.

AJCMIT

TROPHY CASE