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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.
Both gasoline and ethanol have been around since the time of Henry Ford. Gasoline has been the more accessible of all of them. Ethanol and natural gas have been gaining more support over the years and now gasoline contains ten percent ethanol. Propane is mostly used in fleet vehicles. Cars today can run on gasoline with a little ethanol, but too much ethanol can severely damage a vehicle. Only flex fuel vehicles can handle more than ten percent ethanol in a system. Natural gas vehicles are starting to come onto the market. All three fuels have their pros and cons, but the ultimate decision is up to the consumer.
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.
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).
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.
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 (...
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.
"Spindletop - the Birth of the Modern Oil Industry." Petroleum Education: The History of Oil. The Paleontological Research Institution, 2010. Web. 02 Apr. 2011.
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).
In northern Alberta, Canada there lies the Athabasca oil sands this the worlds second largest reserve of oil. The oil oil sands are a mixture of sand clay water and sandstone that are loosely packed together with an an extremely dense form of petroleum called “bitumen” which is an extra heavy oil with very low viscosity. To gain access to this oil, steam or hot water is used to heat it up then it is trucked to an upgrader with separates the oil from the other components after it is separated it goes to a refinery which separates out waist from the synthetic light crude oil then this oil is piped to refineries in the united states where it is refined into our fuels. There are three main oil sand sight in Albert including, Athabasca, peace river and coldlake oil sands with the Athabasca oil sands being the bigest deposit
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.
Fossil fuels are used and burned for the engines of ships, cars, airplane and helicopter engines, lawn appliances, saws, and other machineries. Since the less dense liquid products are in heavy demand for engines for combustion, a refinery will use its ability to convert dense hydrocarbons and less dense gaseous components into numerous higher value products. Petroleum refineries produce millions and millions of crude oil. Interestingly, one oil refinery located in Israel is capable of making up to nine millions tons of crude oil just in one year! The cooling towers of this facility extend so high up into the air, making magnificent landmarks!