CHEMISTRY ISU: REFINEMENT OF CRUDE Oily ISU will focus on Petroleum, a complex mixture of hydrocarbons that occurs in the Earth in liquid, gaseous, or solid forms. The term is usually restricted to the liquid form, commonly called , but as a technical term it also includes natural gas and the viscous or solid form known as bitumen. In its liquid and gaseous states, it is also known as Oil, or Crude Oil. Italicized are segments from my ISU or introduction s to the planned topics.
In my ISU, I plan to dedicate potions of my paper to the following aspects of petroleum. o Petroleum’s many uses. Petroleum today is the source from which we derive many items. The Motor vehicle’s development in the 1930 s gave petroleum a new and swiftly expanding role as the primary source of gasoline; oil and then natural gas replaced coal as the primary fuel for industrial and domestic heating.
Petrochemicals derived from petroleum became the source of such chemical products as solvents, paints, plastics, synthetic rubber and fibres, soaps and cleansing agents, waxes and jellies, explosives, and fertilizers. Petroleum fuels also generate a large portion of the world’s electrical-power supply. o I will also discuss the exploration for crude oil, and the impending crisis if it continues to be used up at the current rates of consumption. (is expected to exhaust the world’s supply by the mid-21 st century) and possible energy alternatives.
o Petroleum’s origin and formation: Petroleum is derived from aquatic plants and animals that died hundreds of millions of years ago. Their remains mixed with mud and sand in layered deposits that, over the millennia, were geologically transformed into sedimentary rock. Gradually the organic matter decomposed into petroleum, which moved from the original source beds to more porous and permeable rocks, such as sandstones and siltstones, where it finally becomes entrapped. o Types of petroleum; for example, Bitumen. It is formed by crude oil that has migrated toward the Earth’s surface and has been stripped of its lighter fractions by descending water. o The components of Petroleum: (A) hydrocarbons.
I will spend a lot of time on this segment, as it allows a lot of discussion about hydrocarbons, in which I can discuss chemical compounds and molecular structures and subsequent properties. Can discuss paraffin’s, , aromatics in detail. (B) Non-hydrocarbons. Other constituents of petroleum include sulfur, oxygen, nitrogen, and the metals nickel and vanadium. Most of these impurities are removed during refining. o The refinery process; fractional distillation.
This portion of my paper will include several diagrams, and detailed explanations of the entire process, starting from the geological techniques used to locate oil. Fractional distillation: a process which separates the crude oil into fractions of differing volatility. After the distillation, other physical methods are employed to separate the mixtures, including absorption, adsorption, solvent extraction, and crystallization. (All of these will be examined in depth). After physical separation into such constituents as light and heavy naphtha’s, kerosene, and light and heavy gas oils, selected petroleum fractions are subjected to chemical conversion processes, such as cracking and reforming to break the large molecules of heavier gas oils into the smaller molecules that form the lighter, more valuable naphtha fractions. Reforming changes the structure of straight-chain paraffin molecules into branched-chain and ring-shaped aromatics..