Sunoco HES Report - How a Refinery Turns Crude Oil

How a Refinery Turns Crude Oil into Essential Products

When many people think about crude oil, they conjure up images of thick, black crude oil spewing from the ground. But then when you pump gasoline into your car, you notice that it's not thick or black; it's a clear liquid. Did you ever wonder what happened to that crude oil? If so, this article will walk you through what happens to crude oil at a refinery to produce gasoline and the many other products you use every day.

To extract the oil from the ground, an oil well is used. An oil well serves the same purpose that a water well does; it pumps the oil out of the ground and into either pipelines or trucks, which in turn take the crude oil to a refinery for processing.

Crude oil contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together; with progressively higher boiling points. Several methods, or processes, are used to produce multiple products with a variety of uses.

This is what happens in an oil refinery - in one part of the process, crude oil is heated and separated into a smaller mixture for sale or additional processing. In another part of the process the smaller mixture will be processed to produce a more valuable product such as gasoline. Each step in the process is designed to produce the products needed in today's world.

Separation of the different boiling range hydrocarbons is accomplished in distillation towers. The distillation process separates the crude by heating the oil in furnaces, a process that actually vaporizes the oil. The oil is then put into a distillation tower, which has many different levels of condensers. The condensers are set to catch the oil vapor as it rises up the tower. The coolest temperatures are at the top and the highest temperatures are at the bottom. The condensers then catch the vapor and turn it back into a liquid but in a much purer state than in its original form.

In another process, the smaller mixture of hydrocarbons are changed in a chemical reaction to produce a compound more suitable for the marketplace, such as gasoline. Lubricating oils are produced from crude oil by first separating the crude into the correct boiling range mixture, and using filtration to separate oil from the wax. The "heaviest" portion of the crude mixture that is separated is then heated to a point where all the liquid is thermally cracked, leaving a solid coal like material, known as petroleum coke.

The products made from the crude oil are stored on-site at the refinery until they can be delivered to various markets such as gas stations, airports and chemical plants. Products are transferred out of the refinery through pipelines and trucks.

Besides just being used for gasoline products, crude oil has many other uses. Some of the products of the crude oil are sold to other refineries that make such things as ammonia, crayons, life preservers, and even mascara.

As you can see, the process crude oil goes through is just as diverse as the number and types of products that are made from it. It is a very important product in our society and without a refinery's ability to process it, we would not be able to maximize all the possibilities for its use.