Crude Oil and the petrochemistry industry.

Gahena Mohanani Y11-2

CHEMISTRY ESSAY ON CRUDE OIL (production and refining) AND THE PETROCHEMISTRY INDUSTRY

How is it Crude Oil extracted?

Crude oil is a vital and extremely sourceful fossil fuel that is obtained from under the ground or under the sea. Crude oil is in fact defined as a mixture of saturated hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons have boiling points which are extremely close together. Once a possible site for oil has been found, a test drilling is made. This is very expensive because the well may be dry or yield only gas- basically oil might not be able to be extracted and the entire process of ‘testing’for this factor is time consuming and expensive due to the equipment used.

A land drilling rig is used to extract the oil. Different types of drill heads are used for different layers of rocks., as each layer has a different level of sensitivity. If the potential oil well is localed under gournd, drill pipes are then connected together to reach down in to the earth. If the oil is located under the sea the process is much harder and an oil-drilling platform has to be used. If the oil well is a good one- meaning the oil can be used i.e. not dry- the first thing that comes up is gas. The pressure of this gas basically causes the oil to be forced up to the surface. Once the oil has been clearly located the drilling rig can be removed and replaced by a pump which forces the oil into storage tanks at oil refiners. Oil is a mixture of hundreds of different chemicals, and can not just be usd staright out of the gorund or below the sea- in it’s natural state it is quite useless! Now, a new process is required to convert the raw crude oil into a fuel that supplies countless services and amenities. This process is known as refinsing They can be separated by fractional distillation and a fractioning column is used for this process.

DIAGRAM OF FRACTIONAL COLUMN

How Does A Fractioning Column Work?

The vapors are basically forced up the columm. As this happens they pass through bubble caps through which some of the vapor condenses. This happens lots of times and because of this mainly only the (thin) volatile liquids with low boiling points reach the top of the column. The heavier liquids, which have a higher boiling point, continually condense and run down to the bottom.

Up the column liquids of different boiling points are collected at different levels. These liquids are known as fractions. ...

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DIAGRAM OF FRACTIONAL COLUMN

How Does A Fractioning Column Work?

Up the column liquids of different boiling points are collected at different levels. These liquids are known as fractions. Each fraction is a mix of several chemicals. The fractions are all distilled again and treated in several ways to get other unwanted and unnecessary chemicals out of them.

Fraction Uses of Particular Fraction

Refinery gas Bottled gasses i.e. Calor gas and plastics

Petrol and Naphtha fuels for cars, chemicals

Kerosene fuel for jets, paraffin

Diesel oil fuel for trains lorries and tractors

Lubrication oils chemicals, oils, waxes and polish, fuels for ships and heating

Bitumen materials for road making, waterproofing, roofing

Petrochemical Industry and Cracking

Petrochemicals are chemicals that come from petroleum or natural gas. After the oil is refined the have to be processed at the neurochemistry industry. Neurochemistry gets its raw materials from the refinery. The raw materials are components of natural gas i.e. butane and some of the other by-products of oil refining processes such as ethane and propane. These raw materials are then processed through an operation. This is known as cracking and it basically the process of breaking down the heavy oil molecules into lighter and more useful fractions.

There are two types of cracking- stream cracking and catalytic cracking. In steam cracking high temperatures are used. In catalytic cracking, a catalyst is used to speed up the process. The plant where all this takes place is called a cracker.

Once these processes are over new products are created i.e. ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, toluene, xylenes. These are then processed in other petrochemical plants into other more specialized products. It sometimes takes more than one step for these products to be ready to be used by the ‘downstream industries’, the customer industries of petrochemistry. It depends on each product.

Finally the petrochemicals are turned in to plastics soaps, detergents, healthcare products such as aspirin, synthetic fibers for clothes and furnitures, rubbers paints and insulating materials. The petrochemical industry is a very signifigant and important industry in our world today, being the source of many modern utilities.

Bibliography: Chemistry matters book, GCSE chemistry A COMPLETE revison 1996 PICTURES:, ,http://www.petroleum.co.uk/education/coryton/images/column.gif