Vocabulary List

Petroleum: Petroleum is also known as crude oil or, in practical terms, unprocessed oil. Petroleum is the term for the oil that first comes out of the ground, before it has been refined to form any product or fraction.

Hydrocarbon: A hydrocarbon is a compound of carbon and hydrogen. The hydrocarbons come in different shapes and structures ranging from straight chains to rings.

Fractions: Various components of petroleum (ex. kerosene, gasoline, etc.).

Oil Refining: In order to obtain products or fractions, oil refining in its most basic sense separates hydrocarbons.

Fractional Distillation:By using the different boiling points of hydrocarbons, fractional distillation is an oil refining process that heats petroleum to a certain level to obtain a certain hydrocarbon chain, then allows it to vaporize, and finally condenses the vapor to wind up with a product.

Thermal Cracking:An oil refining process which cracks hydrocarbons into smaller molecules.

Bibliography

1.) Ramage, Janet Energy A GuideBook. Oxford University Press New York. 1983 (pp.69-71)

2.) (author unknown). Petroleum and Coal. Taken from: http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/topicreview /bp/1organic/

coal.html#petroleum Date of Access: 3/11/03

3.) Zumdahl, Steven S. Introductory Chemistry A Foundation. (Second Edition).D.C. Heath and Company; Lexington, Mass. 1993 (pp.694-696).

4.) Morrison, Robert Thornton and Byrd, Robert Nielson.Organic Chemistry. (Third Edition). Allen and Bacan Inc. Boston. 1973 (pp.87-88)

5.) Brock, William H. The Norton History of Chemistry.W.H. Norton and Company. New York, 1992 (p.653)

6.)Houlm, John R. Organic Chemistry, A Brief Course. John Wiley and Sons, New York 1975 (p.116)

7.) McMurry, John Organic Chemistry (Second Edition). Brooks and Cole Publishing Company, Pacific Grove, CA. 1988 (p.78)

8.) Freudenich, Craig C. Ph D. How Oil Refining Works. Taken from: http://science.howstuffworks.com/oil-refining1.htm Date of Access:4/10/03

9.) (author unknown) (No Title: Header says “#1 Site for Learning Chemistry” Taken From: http://home.att.net/~fuels-IV.htm Date of Access: 4/1/03

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