How Crude Oil Refineries Convert Raw Oil into Usable Products

In essence, one can summarize the activities of a crude oil refineries as the processing of crude into liquids, semi-solids, and solids that are useful and needed in the world. From gasoline and diesel fuel to petrochemical products like plastics – all these transformations are possible thanks to crude oil refineries developed by AOTEWEI.

Stage I - Collection of Resources: Harvesting and transit
Before ending up crude oil refineries, crude oil has to be obtained from underground deposits with the help of drilling processes. More often than not the crude oil extracted goes through pipelines, tankers, or trucks to the crude oil refineries. At this stage, the oil is a heterogeneous mixture of hydrocarbons as well as several other compounds such as sulfur, nitrogen, and metals.

Primary Processing: Distillation
When the crude oil gets to of the crude oil refineries, the first point of processing it is distillation. This entails the heating of the crude oil in a fractionating column, which causes the oil to vaporize and consequently, condensation of the vapors into liquid forms. Because crude oil consists of various components that have different boiling points, it can be separated by these differences. For example C3 & C4 hydrocarbons have a low boiling point therefore condense much earlier while heavier hydrocarbons such as diesel, lubricants etc. have higher boiling points and require violent overheating to vaporize.

Secondary Processing: Conversion and Treatment
Now after the first distillation other processes are used to make the fractions into products which are more useful. This is an example of using a catalyst to convert thick hydrocarbons into thinner ones and in the process producing more gasoline and other thin hydrocarbons. These are determine degraded ones gasoline octane barrels used to treat gasoline hydrocarbons by skeletal reorganization and afforded gas as by coking in which thick hydrocarbons are transformed to light gases and petroleum coke.

Hydrogen treatment is also a hydrocarbon refining stage of oil production. It consists of cleaning various volatile fractions of hydrocarbon molecules from sulfur, nitrogen and metals in order to obtain fuels and chemicals with perfect cleaning properties.

Tertiary Processing: The Final Blending and Finishing
Once the hydrocarbons that meet the requirements of the clients have been produced, it proceeds to the blending for purposes of attaining the specifications required for the different products. This is the case when gasoline is enhanced by the addition of ethanol. Lubrication oils are upgraded with better viscosity and stability. Lastly, the ready-made items are kept in containers until such a time field is ready.

The Final Allocation
Handling of the finished product and also performing the distribution and other functions of marketing for completed courses is the last step that ends a crude oil refineries processes. The transportation of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products is done through pipelines, barges, trucks, trains, etc. to several destination points like service stations, airports and other industrial consumers.