CREATING LIGHT ON ARDA by Cleo Leung
How to make oil lamps and paraffin candles
Paraffin candles Paraffin is a crude oil derivative. Crude oil is formed from the decomposition and accumulation of dead sea creatures over millions of years. As layers of dead organic material build up, the material at the bottoms of these piles are “cooked” by the pressure and are turned into the black sludge we know as crude oil. Most of this crude oil is made of hydrocarbons, each of which has a different boiling temperature which increases with the number of carbon atoms. To refine this oil and collect usable paraffin and other oils, it is heated to about 350^oC and then pumped to a fractionating tower where different	hydrocarbons are fractioned out in a process called fractional distillation. In boiling the oil, we make it evaporate and the gases pass up the fractionating tower where each hydrocarbon condenses at a different level. Trays at different levels collect the condensed liquid and run it off to further refining through pipes. High boiling points corresponds to earlier condensation, and at the very top of the tower, hydrocarbons with the lowest boiling points are collected as uncondensed fuel gases. Paraffin and other related petroleum waxes are derived from lubricating oil distillates. Paraffin comes from light lubricating oil distillates and contains mostly 20-30 carbon chained straight chain hydrocarbons (C18-C36). These hydrocarbons are non-reactive, non-toxic, a great water barrier, clean-burning, and colorless. It has a crystal structure which forms a macrocrystalline wax and is hard and brittle as a solid. The melting point falls between 120^o and 160^o C. However, crude waxes are unclean and have heavy organics in them. So a further refining process occurs. Crystallization is first performed where the wax is heated, mixed with solvent, cooled and crystallized out, leaving oil in a solution. Next the wax is filtered from the solvent in an enclosed inert gas blanketed rotary drum. This is done repeatedly. Then solvent recovery happens. Two streams are emitted from each drum filter from the previous step, one stream with wax, and the other with oil and solvent. Through repeated distillation in steam kettle heat exchangers and stripping towers and recycling back to crystallization and drum filtering, we are able to obtain a “product wax” and “foots oil.” Next the wax is decolored anddeodorized by being passed through a bed of clay to remove color through BACK - HOME - NEXT