crude oil and fractional distillation

• Crude oil contains lots of compounds. Mostly hydrocarbons.
• Crude oil is formed naturally from the remains of dead plants and animals (especially plankton) that died millions of years ago. They were buried in the mud. The high pressures and temperatures underground changed the organic biomass into crude oil.
• Crude oil is a finite resources because we cant replace it at the extent we use it
• To separate the hydrocarbons we use fractional distillation. This only possible because the different hydrocarbons have different boiling points.
• Fraction distillation steps.

  1. Heat crude oil in the chamber until mostly gas
  2. Pass the gas mixture into a fractionating column. These are hot at the bottom and cooler towards the top.
  3. Hot gasses will rise up the column but as soon as they reach an area cooler than their boiling point they will condense into a liquid.
  4. The longer hydrocarbon chains have the highest boiling points. These chains will condense and drain out of the column early on.
  5. Shorter chain hydrocarbons have lower boiling points. They will remain gas much longer and only condense further up the column.
• Some hydrocarbons are so short that they stay as a gas the whole time in the fractionating column (such as LPG which only contains propane and butane)
• Essentially shorter chained hydrocarbons are better fuels and longer chained ones require further breaking down

  
• Bitumen is a long chained hyrocarbon used for surfacing roads
• Heavy fuel oil is a long-chained hydrocarbon that be broken down into heating oil
• Kerosene is a short chained hydrocarbon used for plane fuel
• Petrochemicals (substances from crude oils) can all be used as 'feedstock'. Which is essentially raw materials in the petrochemical industry used to make solvents, lubricants, polymers, and detergents.
• 1. The first step is to heat the crude oil to a very high temperature so that all of the compounds are evaporated.
  2. The hydrocarbons then rise up the fractionating column. They cool down, because the top of the column is cooler than the bottom. 
  3. The hydrocarbons will condense when they become cooler than their boiling point. The liquid hydrocarbons drains out.
  4. The longer chain hydrocarbons condense at the bottom of the fractionating column because they have high boiling points.
  5. the shorter chain hydrocarbons condense at the top of the column because they have much lower boiling points. 
• A feedstock is a raw material used to provide reactants for an industrial reaction.
• A petrochemical is a substance made from crude oil, via chemical reactions.