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Oil Refinery Process

When oil is extracted from the ground it is in a crude form and hence its called crude oil. This crude oil can be made into different usable products like petrol, kerosene, diesel, petroleum gas, and so on, by oil refinery process. This process takes place in an oil refinery which is a sprawling complex of industrial standard and has a labyrinth of pipes and massive chambers.

Crude oil has a lot of different types of hydrocarbons mixed in it and the oil refinery process separates these hydrocarbons as they are useful in making different products and fuels. Oil refinery process has a number of different processes which will separate the hydrocarbons and other residue from the crude oil. Among the various processes, different forms of distillation constitutes the main process and therefore a refinery has a lot of pipes and chambers. Basically distillation involves heating up the liquid, collecting the vapours and condensing them.

Oil refinery process starts in the Desalter unit where all the salt from the crude oil is washed out. The various hydrocarbons mixed in the crude oil have different boiling temperatures and therefore can be extracted by distilling the crude at different temperatures. This process is also called fractional distillation. Each hydrocarbon is valuable and has to extracted and collected carefully without any mixing taking place. The correct application of heat will release that particular hydrocarbon in a vapour state, which has to be collected in a cooling chamber. For example when crude is heated the first substance to be released is gas at 20 degrees. There are different gases released like methane, butane, propane which are very valuable. These gases are collected and sent to the chambers where they are liquified by applying pressure. This is liquified petroleum gas which is so useful for cooking and heating in homes.

In this way the different hydrocarbons are released when they are heated to their boiling points and their vapours are collected and condensed to form the different substances. Due to the different boiling points of these hydrocarbons it is easy in the oil refining process to distill theses substances. It is the diversity of these different substances which make crude oil so precious and the oil refinery process so important. Once the different substances are collected the oil refinery process has to treat them so that they are free of all impurities.

Oil refining process now also uses certain types of chemical processing which helps in converting one form of hydrocarbon to another. For example the chemical process can convert diesel into petrol depending on the demand for each.

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