The composition and uses of Petroleum



The composition and uses of Petroleum

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to make an analysis on the composition and sues of petroleum. There are different uses of the petroleum and different people use petroleum for different purposes. There are different people who assume that petroleum is the same as the gasoline or petrol. They suppose that it is a less pure form of these two extracts in which there is a need of proper refining. In actual the composition of petroleum is something different which is discussed in this paper.

Composition of Petroleum

This section explains the composition of the petroleum. The exact composition of petroleum is very difficult to determine because the crude oil chemical composition varies from one locality to other. Petroleum is also called rock oil as it is derived from two words i.e. petro means rock and oleum means oil. Petroleum is present in the different depths of earth and is usually dark colored oily liquid. Mineral oil and crude oil is the name of the oil wells .

Petroleum is composed of many things i.e. alkanes, cycloalkanes and hydrocarbons. Oxygen and nitrogen is also present in the petroleum apart from the hydrocarbons. As mentioned above, the exact composition of crude oil differs from one field to another. The modern view says that the decay of the animal and plants remains decompose in high pressure and has become petroleum. This decomposition takes as long as million years. The decayed microorganisms emerge from porous rocs and are trapped by impervious rocks. These impervious rocks float on the sea water and extracted by the government.

The elemental composition of the petroleum is as follow. The elements present in the petroleum include oxygen, carbon, sulfur, hydrogen and nitrogen. There are three phases of petroleum which include the natural gas state, the liquid or the crude oil state and the solid or bitumens state. All these states of petroleum have their own uses. Crude oil is less dense oil and is called light oil too. The different products of petroleum include the following. Crude oil, when refined, produces many derivatives for energy production. This specificity has allowed the parallel development of industry, transport and petrochemical. Technological progress and market development of these industries have created a rising demand for oil. The various outlets are at the origin of this demand growth, which accelerated the development of transmission ...