Petroleum deposits

In the United States, the first commercial petroleum deposit was discovered in 1859 near Titusville in western Pennsylvania when Edwin Drake and Bill Smith struck oil in their first shallow (—20 m) well. The well yielded some 400 gallons of oil per day (about 10 barrels). 

When we consider sources of methane we have to add old methane methane that was formed millions of years ago but became trapped beneath the earth s surface to the new methane just de scribed Firedamp an explosion hazard to miners oc curs in layers of coal and is mostly methane Petroleum deposits formed by microbial decomposi tion of plant material under anaerobic conditions are always accompanied by pockets of natural gas which IS mostly methane... 

The ability of C to catenate (i.e. to form bonds to itself in compounds) is nowhere better illustrated than in the compounds it forms with H. Hydrocarbons occur in great variety in petroleum deposits and elsewhere, and form various homologous series in which the C atoms are linked into chains, branched chains and rings. The study of these compounds and their derivatives forms the subject of organic chemistry and is fully discussed in the many textbooks and treatises on that subject. The matter is further considered on p. 374 in relation to the much smaller ability of other Group 14 elements to form such catenated compounds. Methane, CH4, is the archetype of tetrahedral coordination in molecular compounds some of its properties are listed in Table 8.4 where they are compared with those of the... 

Erdbl-industrie, /. petroleum (or oil) industry, -lager, n. petroleum deposit, -riickstand, m. petroleum residue. 

Petroleum chemistry is concerned with the origin, composition, and properties of naturally occurring petroleum deposits, whether in liquid (crude oil or petroleum), gaseous (natural gas), or solid (tars and asphalts) form. All of them are essentially mixtures of hydrocarbons. Whereas natural gas contains a few lighter hydrocarbons, both crude oil and tar deposits may consist of a large number of different hydrocarbons that cannot be easily identified for molecular structure or analyzed for composition. 

British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin once said that "The Kingdom of Heaven runs on righteousness, but the Kingdom of Earth tuns on alkanes." Well, actually he said "tuns on oil" not "runs on alkanes," but they re essentially the same. By far, the major sources of alkanes are the world s natural gas and petroleum deposits. Laid down eons ago, these deposits are thought to be derived from the decomposition of plant and animal matter, primarily of marine origin. Natural gas consists chiefly of methane but also contains ethane, propane, and butane. Petroleum is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons that must be separated into fractions and then further refined before it can be used. 

NMHC. A large number of hydrocarbons are present in petroleum deposits, and their release during refining or use of fuels and solvents, or during the combustion of fuels, results in the presence of more than a hundred different hydrocarbons in polluted air (43,44). These unnatural hydrocarbons join the natural terpenes such as isoprene and the pinenes in their reactions with tropospheric hydroxyl radical. In saturated hydrocarbons (containing all single carbon-carbon bonds) abstraction of a hydrogen (e,g, R4) is the sole tropospheric reaction, but in unsaturated hydrocarbons HO-addition to a carbon-carbon double bond is usually the dominant reaction pathway. 

America s roads more than tripled, General Motors overtook Ford as the world s largest carmaker. And as engineers improved the efficiency of internal combustion engines, the need for more efficient fuel became even more pressing. Adding to the car industry s pressure for a solution to the fuel problem, the U.S. Geological Survey announced—mistakenly—that world petroleum deposits would be depleted in a few years. 

Why build there Large gas and petroleum deposits have been found in the area around Kenai and it is expected that additional oil and gas reserves will be discovered nearby. Natural gas is not only a source for heat and power but also the major raw material in the production of ammonia. Approximately 4 x 107 BTU (107 kcal) of energy are required per ton of ammonia produced. The nearness of the plant to the gas field makes the gas inexpensive. 

Hydrogen sulfide is commonly found in coal and petroleum deposits and may be mobilized by human manipulation of these resources. Coal gasification, a process whereby coal is subjected to heat and steam... 

The monoaromatic compounds benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, commonly found in crude oil, are often jointly called BTEX compounds. The most harmful of these compounds is benzene, which is a known carcinogen. BTEX compounds occur naturally near natural gas and petroleum deposits and are detected in the fumes of forest fires. Most of the highly volatile BTEX compounds released by human activity originate from fuel use and end up as pollutants in the air. Inhaling BTEX-polluted air is also the greatest hazard to humans by these compounds. BTEX compounds are water-soluble, and therefore, improper handling can also cause groundwater contamination. 

Chouparova, E. Lanzirotti, A. Feng, H., et al., Characterization of Petroleum Deposits by Synchrotron Radiation-Based Microanalyses. Energy Fuels, 2004. 18 pp. 1199-1212. 

For instance, 2-methylpropene reacted with acetic acid at 18°C in the presence of Al-bentonite to form the ester product (75). Ion-exchanged bentonites are also efficient catalysts for formation of ketals from aldehydes or ketones. Cyclohexanone reacted with methanol in the presence of Al-bentonite at room temperature to give 33% yield of dimethyl ketal after 30 min of reaction time. On addition of the same clay to the mixture of cyclohexanone and trimethyl orthoformate at room-temperature, the exothermic reaction caused the liquid to boil and resulted in an almost quantitative yield of the dimethyl ketal in 5 min. When Na- instead of Al-bentonite is used, the same reaction did not take place (75). Solomon and Hawthorne (37) suggest that elimination reactions may have been involved in the geochemical transformation of lipid and other organic sediments into petroleum deposits. 

Contact with rain water causes the exposed evaporites to dissolve, mobilizing salt ions for their return to the ocean. Diapirs are of considerable interest to petroleiun geologists because about half of the recoverable petroleum deposits are associated with this salt deposit. 

All organisms synthesize carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and polynucleotides, although the details of their molecular structures can be somewhat species specific. These basic classes of macromolecules have changed little over geologic time. The secondary metabolites are more species specific and have also changed little over geologic time. Many are resistant to degradation, and those provide excellent biomarkers that have been preserved in ancient marine sediments and petroleum deposits. 

Prokaryotes do not synthesize sterols. Instead they create hopanotds, which have four six-membered carbon rings and one five-membered ring (Figure 22.8f). They provide rigidity to cell membranes and are very stable. Because of their widespread use by microbes and their resistance to degradation, they are well preserved in sediments and petroleum deposits, making them the most abundant natural products on Earth. 

Nickel porphyrins are of interest because of their occurrance in coal, shale, and petroleum deposits (1) and because of their key role in biological conversion of COg to methane (2--5). The enzyme methylreductase is the nickel-tetrapyrrole-containing enzyme that catalyses the final step, and possibly other steps, in the 6-electron reduction of CO2 to methane (6). The active site of the methylreductase enzyme contains a nickel-sirochlorin derivative called F 3q (6-8). Understanding the involvement of in methane... 

Thietanes and 3-thietanones represent the only four-membered sulfur-containing heterocycles of the title group that have been isolated from natural sources. Even in petroleum deposits, where 5- and 6-membered cyclic sulfur compounds are common, thietanes occur only in small amounts. However, thiacyclobutane (1) and thiacyclopentane are both commonly found in shale oil and could be utilized as a possible source of fuel. ... 

Gas, Natural. Any gas issuing from under the earth s crust thru openings or bored wells, may be called natural gas. The most important natural gas is that consisting of a mixture of hydrocarbons. Such gas is often found in and near coal or petroleum deposits in many... 

Accdg to Ref 62, p645, seismographic explorations are carried out chiefly in the location of petroleum deposits, both on land and below the surfaces of bodies of water... 

Petroleum—a natural mineral oil—was referred to as early as in the Old Testament. The word petroleum means rock oil [from the Greek petros (rock) and elaion (oil)]. It had been found over the centuries seeping out of the ground, for example, in the Los Angeles basin (practically next door to where this review is written) and what are now the La Brea Tar Pits. Vast deposits were found in varied places ranging from Europe, to Asia, to the Americas, and to Africa. In the United States the first commercial petroleum deposit was discovered in 1859 near Titusville in western Pennsylvania when Edwin Drake and Billy Smith struck oil in their first shallow ( 20-m-deep) well.6 The well yielded 400 gallons (gal) of oil a day (about 10 barrels). The area was known before to contain petroleum that residents... 

Fossil fuel deposits are not distributed evenly throughout the world. For instance, 65 percent of the world s recoverable petroleum deposits are in the Middle East, along with 34 percent of recoverable natural gas deposits. North America is relatively poor in petroleum and natural gas but has a bit more than one-fourth of the world s supply of coal. 

III. In sulphide ores in which the mineral is associated with hydrocarbons. This class includes the patronite deposits of Peru and various vanadium-bearing asphaltites. It is probable that these asphaltites are the residuary seepage of petroleum deposits, and that they have been formed by the action of (a) hydrocarbons and (6) sulphur or hydrogen sulphide on a fairly porous rock which has been impregnated with a vanadium compound. 

The naturally occurring petroleum deposits which the petroleum engineer encounters are composed of organic chemicals. When the chemical mixture is composed of small molecules, it is a gas at normal temperatures and pressures. Table 1-1 gives the composition of typical naturally occurring hydrocarbon gases. 

The organic chemicals studied thus far in this text are known as hydrocarbons, since the molecules contain only carbon and hydrogen atoms. There are many other families of organic compounds which are composed of the basic structures that we have studied however, their molecules contain atoms other than carbon and hydrogen. Table 1-12 lists these families along with the functional groups which characterize the families. These families will not be considered in detail since they are present only to a limited extent in naturally occurring petroleum deposits. 

Water invariably occurs with petroleum deposits. Thus, a knowledge of the properties of this connate, or interstitial, or formation water is important to petroleum engineers. In this chapter, we examine the composition of oilfield water water density, compressibility, formation volume factor and viscosity solubility of hydrocarbons in water and solubility of water in both liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons and, finally, water-hydrocarbon interfacial tension. An unusual process called hydrate formation in which water and natural gas combine to form a solid at temperatures above the freezing point of water is discussed in Chapter 17. 

As the world s petroleum deposits become ever more scarce, other sources of energy will have to be found to replace them. Hydrogen, although it burns cleanly and is relatively nonpolluting, has two drawbacks low availability and low combustion enthalpy per milliliter. Ethanol and methanol look like good current choices for alternative fuels because both can be produced relatively cheaply and... 

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