Crude Oil - Research on Products of Crude Oil and Waste Processes

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CRUDE OIL

Crude oil is a flammable liquid found in subterranean deposits and best known for its use as a fuel and as a raw material for chemical products.

It was originally created from the remains of animals and plants that lived in a water environment. Millions of years ago, much of the earth was covered by seas- more than it is today. Countless millions of tiny creatures and plants lived in these seas. When they died they sank to the bottom, and as the years passed more and more piled up on the sea bed. Silt and sand piled up with them, and the whole lot was pressed firmly down by later layers over the centuries. The terrific pressure of these layers, and of the water on top of them, generated heat. This heat together with other chemical action, affected the remains of the animals and plants. It turned them into a substance called crude oil.

The principal constituents of crude oil are compounds of hydrogen and carbon known chemically as hydrocarbons, the boiling point of a hydrocarbon depends on its chain length, the longer the chain the higher the boiling point. The variation in the boiling points of the hydrocarbons in crude oils allows them to be separated by fractional distillation. Besides hydrocarbons, crude oil contains organic sulfur, oxygen and nitrogen compounds, metals and salts.

·Carbon - 84%

·Hydrogen - 14%

·Sulfur - 1 to 3% (hydrogen sulfide, sulfide's, disulfides, elemental sulfur)

·Nitrogen - less than 1% (basic compounds with amine groups)

·Oxygen - less than 1% (found in organic compounds such as carbon dioxide, phenol's, ketones, carboxylic acids)

·Metals - less than 1% (nickel, iron, vanadium, copper, arsenic)

·Salts - less than 1% (sodium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride)

On average, crude oils are made of the...