Approximately, how long does it take for a refinery to refine 1 barrel of crude oil into all of the gasoline it can get out of that single barrel?
The amount of time required to refine a barrel of oil varies depending upon the quality of the oil. The first part of the process removes particulates and various other stuff. There is various equipment that may be in use such as cat crackers. With sweet crude (from middle east) this might not even be necessary. Crude oil in California needs alot more processing. In fact, we use steam injection during extraction just to get it flowing at a good rate. The rest of the refining process is a distallation process. From a barrel of oil, you actually get several products. You will get kerosene’s, diesel, gas, propane and oils. Probably some other byproducts. There are several stages at specific temperature / pressure for each distilate to be extracted. The process occurs really quickly so I would say it takes a few seconds at the most.
