Petroleum product, commercial

For each category of petroleum products, either governmental or customs specifications or standards for characteristics generally exist, but sometimes there may be nothing but those conditions usually required in commercial contracts. 

Large-scale recovery of light oil was commercialized in England, Germany, and the United States toward the end of the nineteenth century (151). Industrial coal-tar production dates from the earliest operation of coal-gas faciUties. The principal bulk commodities derived from coal tar are wood-preserving oils, road tars, industrial pitches, and coke. Naphthalene is obtained from tar oils by crystallization, tar acids are derived by extraction of tar oils with caustic, and tar bases by extraction with sulfuric acid. Coal tars generally contain less than 1% benzene and toluene, and may contain up to 1% xylene. The total U.S. production of BTX from coke-oven operations is insignificant compared to petroleum product consumptions. 

Properties provided by the branched hydrocarbon chain stmcture of these PAO fluids include high viscosity index in the 130—150 range, pour points of —50 to —60° C for ISO 32 to 68 viscosity range (SAE lOW and SAE 20W, respectively), and high temperature stabifity superior to commercial petroleum products. In their use in automotive oils such as Mobil 1, some ester synthetic fluid is normally included in the formulation to provide sufficient solubihty for the approximately 20% additives now employed in many automotive oils. 

Several processes progressed to demonstration scales but have not been commercialized, primarily because of economic inabiHty to compete with available petroleum products. The H-Coal process developed by Hydrocarbon Research, Inc. was demonstrated at Catiettsburg, Kentucky using a 545 t/d plant and DOE support. The Exxon donor solvent Hquefaction process was not commercialized either. 

Free-radical chain inhibitors are of considerable economic importance. The term antioxidant is commonly appUed to inhibitors that retard the free-radical chain oxidations, termed autoxidations, that can cause relatively rapid deterioration of many commercial materials derived from organic molecules, including foodstuffs, petroleum products, and plastics. The chain mechanism for autoxidation of hydrocarbons is ... 

The pollutant ouqiuts from the refining facilities, however, are modest in comparison to the pollutant outputs realized from the consumption of petroleum products by the transportation sector, electric utilities, chemical manufacturers, and other industrial and commercial users. 

Transportation accounts for about one-fourth of the primary energy consumption in the United States. And unlike other sectors of the economy that can easily switch to cleaner natural gas or electricity, automobiles, trucks, nonroad vehicles, and buses are powered by internal-combustion engines burning petroleum products that produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons. Efforts are under way to accelerate the introduction of electric, fuel-cell, and hybrid (electric and fuel) vehicles to replace sonic of these vehicles in both the retail marketplace and in commercial, government, public transit, and private fleets. These vehicles dramatically reduce harmful pollutants and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 50 percent or more compared to gasoline-powered vehicles. 

The heaviest products obtained directly from oil arc lubricants, waxes, asphalt, and coke. These products have both domestic and industrial uses. Lubricants, for example, are applied in the operation and maintenance of industrial equipment and machinery. Asphalt, because it is not reactive to chemicals in the environment, is a superb material of construction in the building of roads and in roofing. It is also used in the waterproofing of concrete, the manufacture of black paints, and as a material lor tire threads, battery housing, electrical insulation, and other applications. The heaviest of all the petroleum products, coke, is used extensively as a major component of industrial electrodes and as a commercial fuel. 

Early in the century the amount of energy output in the form of food was about equal to the commercial energy input to the crop and livestock. That was before electricity, natural gas, and petroleum products were available to the farm. Now at least 10 kcal of commercial energy is used for each kcal of food energy produced. This change has occurred as a result of mechanization, irrigation, and consumer demand for low fat foods and for precooked and prepared foods. 

Hydrogen sulphide occurs naturally, e.g. in natural gas and petroleum, volcanic gases, and from decaying organic matter. It may be present near oil wells and where petroleum is processed. Commercially it is obtained as a by-product from many chemical reactions including off-gas in the production of some synthetic polymers (e.g. rayon, nylon) from petroleum products, and by the action of dilute mineral acids on metal sulphides. Physical properties are summarized in Table 9.14 and effects of temperature on vapour pressure are shown in Figure 9.5. 

Sulfur for commercial purposes is derived mainly from native elemental sulfur mined by the Frasch process. Large quantities of sulfur are also recovered from the roasting of metal sulfides and the refining of crude oil, i.e., from the sulfur by-products of purified sour natural gas and petroleum (the designation sour is generally associated with high-sulfur petroleum products). Reserves of elemental sulfur in evaporite and volcanic deposits and of sulfur associated with natural gas,... 

The produced fluids and gases are typically directed into separation vessels. Under the influence of gravity, pressure, heat, retention times, and sometimes electrical fields, separation of the various phases of gas, oil, and water occurs so that they can be drawn off in separate streams. Suspended solids such as sediment and salt will also be removed. Deadly hydrogen sulfide (H2S), is sometimes also encountered, which is extracted simultaneously with the petroleum production. Crude oil containing H2S can be shipped by pipeline and used as a refinery feed but it is undesirable for tanker or long pipeline transport. The normal commercial concentration of impurities in crude oil sales is usually less than 0.5% BS W (Basic Sediment and Water) and 10 Ptb (Pounds of salt per 1,000 barrels of oil). The produced liquids and gases are then transported to a gas plant or refinery by truck, railroad tank car, ship, or pipeline. Large oil field areas normally have direct outlets to major, common-carrier pipelines. 

Pure xylan is not employed in industry. but crude xylan or pentosans are of industrial importance. Xylan has been proposed as a textile size but is not employed as yet for this purpose.130 Perhaps the largest use of pentosans is in their conversion to furfural, which has many applications and serves as the source of other furan derivatives. At the present time, large quantities of furfural are used in the extractive purification of petroleum products, and recently a large plant has been constructed to convert furfural by a series of reactions to adipic acid and hexamethylene-diamine, basic ingredients in the synthesis of nylon. In commercial furfural manufacture, rough ground corn cobs are subjected to steam distillation in the presence of hydrochloric acid. As mentioned above, direct preferential hydrolysis of the pentosan in cobs or other pentosan-bearing products could be used for the commercial manufacture of D-xylose. 

Since there is no concerted effort to coordinate testing underway in various laboratories of the world, it might be felt that this lack of coordination may cause some important substances to be missed and thereby present the possibility of harm being done to people or the environment. In order to determine if this were so, we undertook an examination of the top 50 chemicals produced in the U.S. This is a list of commercial chemicals selected by CHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING NEWS as those materials with the largest production. It should be noted that these are distinct substances, not mixtures or petroleum products (Table XI). 

It is generally agreed that worldwide petroleum supply will eventually reach its productive limit, peak, and begin a long term decline. One of the alternatives is the Nation s untapped oil shale as a strategically located, long-term source of reliable, affordable, and secure oil. The extent of U.S. oil shale resources, which amounts to more than 2 trillion barrels, has been known for a century. In 1912, the President established the Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves. There have been several commercial attempts to produce oil from oil shale, but these have failed because of the lower cost of petroleum at the time. With future declines in petroleum production, market forces are expected to improve the economic viability of oil shale. 

A petrochemical is any chemical (as distinct from fuels and petroleum products) manufactured from petroleum (and natural gas) and used for a variety of commercial purposes (Table 3.8). The definition, however, has been broadened to include the entire range of aliphatic, aromatic, and naphthenic organic chemicals, as well as carbon black and inorganic materials such as sulfur and anunonia. Petroleum and natural gas are made up of hydrocarbon molecules, which comprise one or more carbon atoms to which hydrogen atoms are attached. Currently,... 

Table 4.1 Fraction range (in %w) of three hydrocarbons in selected commercial petroleum products, based on data from Gustafson et al. (1997)...

Biosolids-enhanced remediation (BER) is an ex situ bioremediation technology used to treat soils contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons and polycychc aromatic hydrocarbons. The BER technology was developed by isolating particular microorganisms with the ability to degrade the specific components of petroleum products. The technology has been applied full scale and is commercially available. 

The CRS process is a commercially available closed-loop technology that is designed to separate hydrocarbon contaminants from soil without the use of surfactants or other additives. According to the vendor, this technology can be used to remediate petroleum production facilities, refineries, and other industrial sites including airports, military bases, tank farms, fuel storage and transportation terminals, and waste sites. 

ISE is a commercially available technology. It has been implemented at sites contaminated with petroleum products (e.g., gasoline, diesel fnel, jet fnel) and solvents. The technology is capable of treating soil with underground obstrnctions snch as bnried tanks, utility lines, and buried rock and debris. This technology cannot remediate metals. 

Although infrared absorption analysis of hydrocarbon mixtures was described by Lecomt and Lambert (34), the extensive application of this technique to the examination of petroleum products awaited the commercial availability of a practical instrumental unit and adequately described methods such as those of Brattain and Beeck (11) for a two component mixture and Brattain et al. (12) for a multicomponent mixture of hydrocarbon gases. By such methods the possible qualitative constituents of the sample must, of course, be known and their number limited to a maximum probably simultaneously present. 

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