How Oil Refining Works

The Refining Process

As mentioned previously, a barrel of crude oil has a mixture of all sorts of hydrocarbons in it. Oil refining separates everything into useful substances. Chemists use the following steps:

1. The oldest and most common way to separate things into various components (called fractions), is to do it using the differences in boiling temperature. This process is called fractional distillation. You basically heat crude oil up, let it vaporize and then condense the vapor.
2. Newer techniques use Chemical processing on some of the fractions to make others, in a process called conversion. Chemical processing, for example, can break longer chains into shorter ones. This allows a refinery to turn diesel fuel into gasoline depending on the demand for gasoline.
3. Refineries must treat the fractions to remove impurities.
4. Refineries combine the various fractions (processed, unprocessed) into mixtures to make desired products. For example, different mixtures of chains can create gasolines with different octane ratings.
   

Photo courtesy Phillips Petroleum Company An oil refinery

The products are stored on-site until they can be delivered to various markets such as gas stations, airports and chemical plants. In addition to making the oil-based products, refineries must also treat the wastes involved in the processes to minimize air and water pollution.

In the next section, we will look at how we separate crude oil into its components.