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Typical industrial fractional distillation columns. Fractional distillation is the most common form of separation technology used in petroleum refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants, natural gas processing and cryogenic air separation plants. [3] [4] In most cases, the distillation is operated at a continuous steady state. New feed is ...
The hot crude oil is then passed into a distillation column that allows the separation of the crude oil into different fractions depending on the difference in volatility. The pressure at the top is maintained at 1.2–1.5 atm [ 2 ] so that the distillation can be carried out at close to atmospheric pressure, and therefore it is known as the ...
A fractionating column or fractional column is equipment used in the distillation of liquid mixtures to separate the mixture into its component parts, or fractions, based on their differences in volatility. Fractionating columns are used in small-scale laboratory distillations as well as large-scale industrial distillations.
Petroleum refinery in Anacortes, Washington, United States. Petroleum refining processes are the chemical engineering processes and other facilities used in petroleum refineries (also referred to as oil refineries) to transform crude oil into useful products such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline or petrol, kerosene, jet fuel, diesel oil and fuel oils.
A typical fluid catalytic cracking unit in a petroleum refinery. Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) is the conversion process used in petroleum refineries to convert the high-boiling point, high-molecular weight hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum (crude oils) into gasoline, alkene gases, and other petroleum products.
Large scale industrial distillation applications include both batch and continuous fractional, vacuum, azeotropic, extractive, and steam distillation. The most widely used industrial applications of continuous, steady-state fractional distillation are in petroleum refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants and natural gas processing plants.
The crude oil is fed to a stabilizer which is typically a tray or packed tower column that achieves a partial fractionation or distillation of the oil. [4] The heavier components, pentane (C 5 H 12), hexane (C 6 H 14), and higher hydrocarbons (C 7 +), flow as liquid down through the column where the temperature is increasingly higher.
Fractionation is also used for culinary purposes, as coconut oil, palm oil, and palm kernel oil are fractionated to produce oils of different viscosities, that may be used for different purposes. These oils typically use fractional crystallization (separation by solubility at temperatures) for the separation process instead of distillation.