Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Refining breaks crude oil down into its various components, which are then selectively reconfigured into new products. Petroleum refineries are complex and expensive industrial facilities. All refineries have three basic steps: Separation. Conversion. Treatment. Separation. Modern separation involves piping crude oil through hot furnaces.
The crude oil distillation unit (CDU) is the first processing unit in virtually all petroleum refineries. The CDU distills the incoming crude oil into various fractions of different boiling ranges, each of which are then processed further in the other refinery processing units.
Distillation involves the separation of materials based on differences in their volatility. This is the first and most basic step in the refining process, and is the precursor to cracking and reforming. Cracking involves breaking up heavy molecules into lighter (and more valuable) hydrocarbons.
The physical characteristics of crude oil determine how refineries process it. In simple terms, crude oils are classified by density (API gravity) and sulfur content. Less dense (lighter) crude oils (with higher API gravity) generally have more light hydrocarbons.
Petroleum refining, conversion of crude oil into useful products, including fuel oils, gasoline (petrol), asphalt, and kerosene. Learn more about petroleum refining, including its history and the various processes used to create the different products.
Learn how we refine crude oil and turn it into products like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Petroleum refining is a complex process that transforms crude oil into valuable products like gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, heating oil, and various petrochemicals.
You basically heat crude oil up, let it vaporize and then condense the vapor. Newer techniques use Chemical processing on some of the fractions to make others, in a process called conversion. Chemical processing, for example, can break longer chains into shorter ones.
Crude oil naturally contains contaminants such as sulfur, nitrogen, and heavy metals, which are undesirable in motor fuels. The treating process, primarily hydrotreating, removes these chemicals by binding them with hydrogen, absorbing them in separate columns, or adding acids to remove them.
The oil refining process starts with a fractional distillation column. The problem with crude oil is that it contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together. You have to separate the different types of hydrocarbons to have anything useful.