Refining
Once oil is out of the ground, it can be made into many products through the process of refining. This is a multi-step process and the goal is to produce products that are marketable, economical and, from an environmental point of view, acceptable. The first products in the refining process produce liquid fuels, which are mostly used for transportation, although they may also be used for other processes, such as producing steam for a power plants. The secondary products are used in the chemical industries and to make polymers. Not only are the oils being transported to refineries becoming increasingly more sour, as stated earlier, their API gravities have dropped from 30-40° in the late nineteenth century to 15-30° by the end of the last century. 27
Our textbook, Chemistry in the Community, has very good diagrams for refining and distillation. Refining of petroleum will be dealt with by taking a field trip to the local refinery and the students will perform a distillation experiment. There are several good websites available that do an amazing job of breaking down the various processes of refining. Students should review some of these websites on their own and then come together as teams to explain specific processes to the rest of the class. These websites would be used as springboards for their research. Teachers can also use these websites to make a list of questions that students have to answer. A list of these websites can be found in Teacher Resources.
After student presentations on the various processes involved in refining, a condensation lab will be performed. Our school is located just a few miles from a refinery so we will take a field-trip to round out this portion of the unit. Using the information found in this section, the field-trip is not a neccessity in order to understand the overall processes, but it's fun.
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