What products are distilled from crude oil?

From Gasoline to asphalt tar;


鈥iquid petroleum gas (LPG) and propone


鈥olvents like Naphtha


鈥uel like Kerosene and related jet aircraft fuels


鈥ehicle fuel like Diesel fuel, Gasoline and other fuel oils


鈥ubricating oils in different grades by the thickness


鈥araffin wax for some candles to food packaging


鈥sphalt and Tar


鈥etroleum coke


鈥ulfur for matches to black gun powder





According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinin鈥?/a>


';An oil refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas. Oil refineries are typically large sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units...





Raw or unprocessed (';crude';) oil is not useful in the form it comes in out of the ground. Although ';light, sweet'; (low viscosity, low sulfur) oil has been used directly as a burner fuel for steam vessel propulsion, the lighter elements form explosive vapors in the fuel tanks and so it is quite dangerous, especially so in warships. For this and many other uses, the oil needs to be separated into parts and refined before use in fuels and lubricants, and before some of the byproducts could be used in petrochemical processes to form materials such as plastics, detergents, solvents, elastomers, and fibers such as nylon and polyesters. Petroleum fossil fuels are used in ship, automobile and aircraft engines. These different hydrocarbons have different boiling points, which means they can be separated by distillation. Since the lighter liquid elements are in great demand for use in internal combustion engines, a modern refinery will convert heavy hydrocarbons and lighter gaseous elements into these higher value products.





Oil can be used in so many various ways because it contains hydrocarbons of varying molecular masses, forms and lengths such as paraffins, aromatics, naphthenes (or cycloalkanes), alkenes, dienes, and alkynes. Hydrocarbons are molecules of varying length and complexity made of only hydrogen and carbon atoms. Their various structures give them their differing properties and thereby uses. The trick in the oil refinement process is separating and purifying these.





Once separated and purified of any contaminants and impurities, the fuel or lubricant can be sold without any further processing. Smaller molecules such as isobutane and propylene or butylenes can be recombined to meet specific octane requirements of fuels by processes such as alkylation or less commonly, dimerization. Octane grade of gasoline can also be improved by catalytic reforming, which strips hydrogen out of hydrocarbons to produce aromatics, which have much higher octane ratings. Intermediate products such as gasoils can even be reprocessed to break a heavy, long-chained oil into a lighter short-chained one, by various forms of cracking such as fluid catalytic cracking, thermal cracking, and hydrocracking. The final step in gasoline production is the blending of fuels with different octane ratings, vapor pressures, and other properties to meet product specifications.





Oil refineries are large scale plants, processing from about a hundred thousand to several hundred thousand barrels of crude oil per day. Because of the high capacity, many of the units are operated continuously (as opposed to processing in batches) at steady state or approximately steady state for long periods of time (months to years). This high capacity also makes process optimization and advanced process control very desirable.





These will blend various feedstocks, mix appropriate additives, provide short term storage, and prepare for bulk loading to trucks, barges, product ships, and railcars.





* Gaseous fuels such as propane, stored and shipped in liquid form under pressure in specialized railcars to distributors.


* Liquid fuels blending (producing automotive and aviation grades of gasoline, kerosene, various aviation turbine fuels, and diesel fuels, adding dyes, detergents, antiknock additives, oxygenates, and anti-fungal compounds as required). Shipped by barge, rail, and tanker ship. May be shipped regionally in dedicated pipelines to point consumers, particularly aviation jet fuel to major airports, or piped to distributors in multi-product pipelines using product separators called pipeline inspection gauges (';pigs';).


* Lubricants (produces light machine oils, motor oils, and greases, adding viscosity stabilizers as required), usually shipped in bulk to an offsite packaging plant.


* Wax (paraffin), used in the packaging of frozen foods, among others. May be shipped in bulk to a site to prepare as packaged blocks.


* Sulfur (or sulfuric acid), byproducts of sulfur removal from petroleum which may have up to a couple percent sulfur as organic sulfur-containing compounds.';





The principle methods used are changing the temperature to boil off various materials and then use catyalsts and other processes to seperate each material. All of this has to be sent by a maze of pipes to each process, system and storage tank.





See the chart in the article for a better idea of how it is done.What products are distilled from crude oil?
this site has a pretty good break down of what all it makes


http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/鈥?/a>