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Uses of petroleum products essay
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Petroleum by Shivkiran Anil Nambiar! for Mr. Tony Burton
Introduction to Petroleum
Petroleum is a natural substance that occurs beneath the earth’s surface. Petroleum is made of decomposed organic substances and hydrocarbons of different atomic weights. !
Petroleum is the name commonly used for presenting both unprocessed crude oil and the products of petroleum that are made up of refined crude oil. !
As a fossil fuel, petroleum is constantly being formed naturally below our feet in the fossil layers of the crust when large quantities of dead animals and plants are buried underneath rock and are subjected to intense heat from the magma from the mantle layer and immense pressure from the top of the crust over long periods of time.

Extraction of Petroleum
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Petroleum is retrieved from the fossil layer of the crust mostly through oil drilling. It is then refined and separated, most easily by boiling it and then gets converted into a large number of consumer products that varies from Petrol (known as gasoline mainly in the US and in Canada ) to petrochemicals that are used...
This area is known as the Permian Basin. Most of the oil is being produced from rocks
Oil provides us with many necessities in our lives. Cosmetics, medicines, cleaning products, asphalt, food, plastic, and most importantly, petroleum. But of course, nothing comes without a price. The oil that makes our lives so much more convenient, is also ironically gradually killing the environment, this very Earth that we live in. One of the biggest environmental concerns come from oil spills. Oil spill is defined as “ the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution.” Let’s look at some examples of these oil spills.
Two properties are required for fluid movement of Reservoir rocks and Source rocks: permeability and porosity. It consist voids or pores, ability to contain fluid (known as porosity) and the pores are interconnected (permeability) in order to allow flow to occur. Hydrocarbons can be termed as reservoir fluid. The volume of hydrocarbons stored in a reservoir depends upon the porosity of the reservoir rock. The rate and volume at which hydrocarbons are withdrawn depends upon the permeability of the reservoir rock. Almost complete pore space of the superior several kilometres of earth’s crust contains water. Therefore in this water environment hydrocarbons exist with amalgamation of oil, gas and water occurring in different proportions.
Oil is a significant, non renewable resource that is found underground and extracted through technological processes (Grubb). Consumption rates of the substance have never been higher. Oil remains to this day a vital aspect of production in industries like plastics, fertilizers, and asphalt. World oil consumption presently rests around 83 million barrels per day (...
"Spindletop - the Birth of the Modern Oil Industry." Petroleum Education: The History of Oil. The Paleontological Research Institution, 2010. Web. 02 Apr. 2011.
According to U.S. Energy Information Administration website (eia.gov), a crude oil refinery is identified as a collection of many industrial facilities that turns crude oil into petroleum as finished products. Petroleum and oil are used interchangeably.
Oil sands are unconventional petroleum deposits that consist of loose sand and partially consolidated sand stone that contains natural mixtures of natural clay, sand and water which is saturated with a highly viscous form of petroleum that flows extremely slowly known as bitumen (Yunchez, 2012).
After the oil/gas mixture is drawn from the ground, it is then stored into a storage tank and allowed to rest for a while. Then the gas is piped off to a set of distillation columns to clean up the ethane. In order to activate the chemical reaction necessary to separate the ethane, a thermal cracking unit (a sort of long heated tube) i.e. a plug flow reactor is used. After a series of distillations, ethylene exits the tube.
Biodiesel is considered an environmentally friendly alternative because it reduces the amount many toxic substances. Plants such as soybeans require carbon dioxide from the air to produce their stems, roots and leaves. During biodiesel production from soybean oil, carbon dioxide is produced and released in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is considered a green house gas (GHG). However, this cycle of GHG emission does not neccersarily contribute to the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This is because the next soybean crop will reuse the carbon dioxide emitted for its growth. Another important environmental benefit is that biodiesel reduces particulate matter (PM), hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions. These benefits occur because biodiesel contains 11% oxygen by weight. Oxygen allows the fuel to burn better, resulting in fewer emissions from unburned fuel. And lastly, biodiesel fuels do not contain any sulfur and does not have an unpleasant smell when it is emitted from vehicles.
Crude oil has may different forms that are found in different parts of the world.1)very light Crude which is used to make gasoline, Jet fuel and Kerosine this oil is highly volatile and can evaporate in a matter of days.2) Light crude which is also used for gasoline and other fuels including diesel oil. These oils are not as volatile but care moderately toxic and evaporate less quickly.3)Medium oils, which accounts for most of the cru...
In today’s world humans are consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels. The top five oil consuming countries in the world are the usual suspects. These include the United States, China, Japan, India and Russia. Canada comes in at number 10 with a daily consumption of 2,287 thousand barrels per day. There are three major types of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas. These resources were formed during the Carboniferous Period 360-286 million years ago. During this time earth was covered in swamps with large amounts of plants and waters filled with algae. When these plants and trees began to die they would form layers of peat. Hundreds and thousands of years would pass adding sand and other materials on top of the peat. This formed the sedimentary rocks we know today. As the thousands of years turned into millions of years the water of the peat layer was pushed out of the peat until the layer of diatoms turned into coal, oil or natural gas (CEC, 2013). Canada has oil industry throughout the country and currently 12 out of 13 provinces are active in the oil industry. Natural gas production is occurring in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Natural gas could also become large industry in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Oil production is currently taking place in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland & Labrador (CAPP, 2013).
finding new ways to drill for oil and also refine it more efficiently to ensure that
Petroleum engineering is the development and exploitation of crude/oil and natural gas. The foundation was established during the 1890s in California. This career was developed to correlate oil- producing zones and water zones from well to prevent large amounts of water from entering oil- produced zones.
» Downstream: significant refineries incorporate unrefined petroleum preparing and transport of items to retail outlets.
The oil refinery converts crude oil into valuable products and supplies. These products are made and sent to many countries abroad, in which are transported on land or along rivers and canals. Crude oil is then arranged and categorized into segments by fractional distillation. Raw crude oil, or unprocessed crude oil, is not normally beneficial in most industrial applications. Low sulfur crude oil has been valuable as a burner fuel to construct steam for the force of seagoing vessels. The lighter elements have the ability to construct explosive and dangerous vapors in the gas tanks. There are extremely hazardous, and are often used in war ships. The remaining hydrocarbon molecules are filtered from crude oil and used towards lubricants, feedstock, plastics, and fuels.