Home > Oil refinery

Raw or unprocessed ("crude") oil is not very useful in the form it comes in out of the ground. It needs to be broken down into parts and refined before use in a solid material such as plastics and foams, or as petroleum fossil fuels as in the case of automobile and airplane engines.

Oil can be used in so many various ways because it contains hydrocarbons of varying lengths such as paraffins, aromatics, napthene s (or cycloalkanes), alkenes, dienes, and alkyneAlkynes are hydrocarbons that have at least one triple bond between carbon atoms. The alkynes are traditionally known as acetylenes though the name acetylene is also used to refer specifically to the simplest member of the series, known officially as ethys.

Hydrocarbons are molecules of varying length and complexity made of hydrogen and carbon. Their various structures give them their differing properties and thereby uses. The trick in the oil refinement process is separating and purifying these. All these different hydrocarbons have different boiling pointAlternate use: Boiling Point, English title of Kitano Takeshi's film 3-4X Jugatsu The boiling point of a substance is the temperature at which it can change state from a liquid to a gas throughout the bulk of the liquid. A liquid may change to a gas at tes, which means they can be separated by distillationDistillation is a means of separating liquids through differences in their boiling points. Known since antiquity, the concentration of alcohol by the application of heat to a fermented liquid mixture is perhaps the oldest form of distillation. However, th.

Once separated and any contaminents and impurities have been removed, the oil can be either sold without any further processing, or recombined to meet specific requirements (as in the case of fuels with different octaneOctane is an alkane hydrocarbon with the chemical formula CH(CH)CH. It has many isomers; one of these, isooctane (2,2,4-trimetylpentane), is especially important, because its octane rating is by definition 100. It is an important constituent of petrol. ratings) or even be reprocessed to break a heavy, long-chained oil into a lighter short-chained one.

Oil refineries can become very large and sprawling complexes with vast numbers of pipeThe word pipe can refer to: a tubular man-made channel, generally round in cross section, for transporting or guiding a fluid substance. See plumbing and pipeline transport an exhaust pipe, for channelling waste fumes from an engine or stove certain musics running all throughout the facility. The refining process causes many different chemicals to be released into the atmosphereEarth's atmosphere is the layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth and retained by the Earth's gravity. It consists of nitrogen (78. 1% by volume) and oxygen (20. 9%), with small amounts of argon (0. 9%), carbon dioxide (variable, but around 0. 035%),, so a (sometimes very intense) odor accompanies the presence of a refinery. Environmental groups have lobbied many governments to increase restrictions on how much material refineries can release, and many refineries have installed equipment and changed practices to lessen the environmental impact. In the United States, there is strong pressure to prevent the development of new refineries, and none have been built in the country for more than three decades. However, many already-existing refineries have expanded during that time.