“an Overview Of The Current And Future Importance Of Oil In The World In Terms Of Energy And Resources”

Essay by qw2222Junior High, 8th gradeA+, September 2011

download word file, 6 pages 0.0

"AN OVERVIEW OF THE CURRENT AND FUTURE IMPORTANCE OF OIL IN THE WORLD IN TERMS OF ENERGY AND RESOURCES"

PART 1

Crude Oil, 'Black Gold' as it is popularly known is perhaps the single most important source of energy that is finite and will soon run out. The main sources of this oil are the wells of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Canada, USA, Kuwait, and so on. Fossilized remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, were subjected to immense pressure and heat, under the Earth's crust for a prolonged period, causing it to liquefy into a smelly, yellow-to-black liquid known as crude.

Crude oil, is a mixture of various compounds, that can be separated, by a process called known as refining. This process is carried out in units known as refineries. Refining itself consists of various procedures like fractional distillation, cracking etc. These processes are well organized and performed in a particular sequence, depending on the physical properties of the different compounds, contained in the crude oil.

Fractional distillation:

Different compounds contained in the crude oil have different boiling points. This property of the compounds is the main principal utilized in the process of fractional distillation.

In simple words, fractional distillation is a process in which crude oil is heated in a closed chamber and its vapors are collected at different temperatures, thus separating the various compounds of crude oil.

Cracking-

Fractions obtained form fractional distillation are very complex, these can be further broken into simpler compounds by 3 basic methods, one of them is cracking (the other two being, unification and alteration)

The process of cracking is carried out by many methods, namely themal, visbreaking, steam and coking.

PART 2

There are many compounds obtained from fractional distillation namely:

Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG)-...