Crude Oil By Sharon Stephen

crude Oil Crude oil is formed through a long process which took place millions of years ago. Huge numbers of microscopic animals and plants died and fell to the bottom of the sea, which is then covered by mud sediments. These mud sediments got buried by more of them, and then started to change into rock, which created pressure and increased temperature. This resulted in the deceased plants and animals to heat up and slowly turned into fossils which then turns into crude oil.

Since oil is less dense hat the water in the rocks, the oil particles rose to form a layer of crude oil if rock layer was permeable. At some point, the oil reaches a layer of rock that''s impermeable, therefore gets trapped underneath that layer. Crude oil is found all over the world, many from under the sea, but the largest fuel reserves are usually in areas such as Saudi Arabia, China, United States, Russia, etc. It is possible to extract crude oil from under the sea by 3 simple stages. The first stage involves natural pressure driving the oil into the pipelines drilled into the ground in he oil wells.

Later, the second stage consists of liquids being injected and pumping out remaining amounts of crude oil. Finally, the last stage involves using heat to force out the last of the crude oil that were previously difficult to extract. Crude oil is a compound in form of a liquid. Crude oil is composed mostly of hydrogen and carbon. Crude oil is also made up of mixtures of several other substances such as benzene, chromium, iron, mercury, nickel, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, toluene, and xylene.

This mixture results in a dark, yellow, greasy liquid. Within crude oil, there are many different types of fuel that are used for different objects, depending on the number of carbon bonds. Some of these fuels are refinery gas, petrol, paraffin, diesel, residue, etc. distillation. This process involves separating substances into different parts, or fractions. A tall column is fitted above the mixture, along with several condensers attached at different heights.

The column is hot at the bottom and cool at the top, so hat substances with high boiling points cool at the bottom and likewise substances with a low boiling point cool at the top. This method works because different substances in the mixture, i. e. paraffin and petrol, have different boiling points. The diagram shown to the right demonstrates how different types of oil are easily separated inside the tall column using fractional distillation. Fraction Percentage of crude oil Refinery Gas 2% Petrol 22% Paraffin (keroscene) Diesel 24% Residue (fuel, oil, bitumen, etc. ) 35%