Petroleum or crude oil

Finally, it is interesting to mention that the most recent evidence shows that even extraterrestrially formed hydrocarbons can reach the Earth. The Earth continues to receive some 40,000 tons of interplanetary dust every year. Mass-spectrometric analysis revealed the presence of hydrocarbons attached to these dust particles, including polycyclic aromatics such as phenanthrene, chrysene, pyrene, benzopyrene, and pentacene of extraterrestrial origin (indicated by anomalous isotopic ratios5). 

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 

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Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring complex mixture, composed mainly of hydrocarbons. Although there are, without any doubt, numerous compounds that have been formed directly from biologically produced molecules, the majority of petroleum components are of secondary origin, either decomposition products or products of condensation and polymerization reactions. 

Bitumen describes a black or dark brown masticlike material that is thermoplastic in nature and softens upon heating. The sources of bitumen are petroleum or coal deposits. The natural product is commonly called gilsonite or pitch, a mineral formed by an old weathered petroleum flow at the surface of the earth that has left behind the larger molecules from the petroleum. A principal source in the past has been Lake Trinidad, a 445,000 m2 deposit on the island of Trinidad. Bitumen from petroleum or crude oil is called asphalt (qv). It is the material left behind after all the valuable compounds, eg, gasolines, have been distilled out of the cmde oil. The amount and quality of asphalt is dependent on the source of the crude oil used in the refining process. Some cmde oils have a higher content of asphaltic bitumen left after the distillation process. Bitumen from coal is coal-tar pitch. It remains after the valuable coal oils and tars have been distilled out of the coal tars produced by distractive distillation. Most industrial applications for bitumen products use asphalt or coal-tar pitch because the supply is more uniform and plentiful. 

Petroleum or crude oil is a thick, dark coloured liquid. It is a mixture of various hydrocarbons. Crude oil or petroleum cannot be used as it is. The various hydrocarbons have to be separated. 

Petroleum, or crude oil, was discovered in the United States (Pennsylvania) in 1859 and in the Middle East (Iran) in 1908. It has been found in many other locations since these initial discoveries and is now pumped from the ground in many parts of the world. Petroleum consists mainly of hydrocarbons. Small amounts of organic compounds containing nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen are also present. Each oil field produces petroleum with a particular set of characteristics. Distillation of petroleum produces several fractions. 

Petroleum or crude oil has been known for a long time. Archeologists have shown that it had already been extracted and used for about 5-6 thousand years before Christ. The most ancient known oil wells are those at Ephrata and the Kerch coast in the Chinese province of Sychuan. The mention of petroleum has been found in many ancient manuscripts and books. For example, the Bible writes about "pitch wells in the vicinities of the Dead Sea". 

Petroleum, or crude oil, is a mixture of hydrocarbons plus smaller quantities of other organic compounds containing nitrogen, oxygen, or sulfur. The tremendous demand for petroleum to meet the world s energy needs has led to the tapping of oil wells in such forbidding places as the North Sea and northern Alaska. 

Petroleum, or crude oil, is an extremely complex mixture derived like coal from prehistoric vegetation. The components range from gaseous to semi-solid or solid hydrocarbons, with compounds of sulphur, nitrogen, oxygen and various metals as impurities. Distillation gives roughly the fractions shown in Table 12.1. The hydrocarbons are almost entirely saturated paraffins, cycloparaffins (naphthenes) and aromatics/polyaromatics the proportions vary enormously from one source to another. 

Digestion of fossil fuel samples is the most labor-intensive and time-consuming step in the analytical procedures described so far. Techniques with direct introduction of the isotope-diluted sample would therefore be much more attractive and suitable for use as routine methods. In this context, Heumann and co-workers developed two different methods which avoid the digestion step and rely on direct introduction of the isotope-diluted sample into the ICP. LA-ICP-IDMS was applied for the determination of sulfur and metals in petroleum products and crude oils [47, 48] and thermal vaporization (TV)-ICP-IDMS was used for the determination of trace amounts of sulfur in petroleum products [36]. To totally mix a petroleum or crude oil sample with the spike, the spike needs to be in an organic form. A " S-labeled dibenzothiophene spike in xylene and isotope-enriched organometallic compounds of the metals of interest in isobutyl methyl ketone were used for LA-ICP-IDMS purposes. For sulfur determination via TV-ICP-IDMS, the same spike was applied, but n-hexane was used as the... 

Figure 21.13 Petroleum refinery towers. Raw petroleum, or crude oil, is the starting point from which a huge number of products are made. The first step in the refining process is to distiU the oil mixture into other mixtures based on boiling point ranges. These fractions are then further refined and processed. 

PETROLEUM OR CRUDE OIL. A mixture of hydrocarbons obtained from an oil well. Usually an oil well also produces salt water brine. In general, these brines are corrosive to metals. Some brines are cono-rive to aluminum alloys while others can be handled in aluminum alloy equipment. Tests are necessary... 

Petroleum, or crude oil, is believed to be the product of microbial degradation of living organic matter that existed several hundred million years ago. Crude oil, a dark viscous Uquid, is primarily a mixture of several hundred different hydrocarbons, particularly straight-chain alkanes, some branched alkanes, and varying quantities of aromatic hydrocarbons. Distillation yields several fractions with a typical product distribution, as shown in Table 3-3. The composition of petroleum varies widely, depending on the origin of the oil. 

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