What do the refining processes do?
Crude oil contains a wide range of hydrocarbons, organometallics and other compounds containing sulfur, nitrogen etc. The HCs contain between 1 and 60 carbon atoms. Gasoline requires hydrocarbons with carbon atoms between 3 and 12, arranged in specific ways to provide the desirable properties. Obviously, a refinery has to either sell the remainder as marketable products, or convert the larger molecules into smaller gasoline molecules. A refinery will distill crude oil into various fractions and, depending on the desired final products, will further process and blend those fractions. Typical final products could be:- gases for chemical synthesis and fuel (CNG), liquified gases (LPG), butane, aviation and automotive gasolines, aviation and lighting kerosines, diesels, distillate and residual fuel oils, lubricating oil base grades, paraffin oils and waxes. Many of the common processes are intended to increase the yield of blending feedstocks for gasolines. Typical modern refinery processe
