An oil refinery is an industrial plant that refines crude oil into petroleum products such as diesel, gasoline and heating oils. Oil refineries essentially serve as the second stage in the production process following the actual extraction of crude oil by rigs. The first step in the refining process is distillation, where crude oil is heated at extreme temperatures to separate the different hydrocarbons.
Oil refineries serve an important role in the production of transportation and other fuels. The crude oil components, once separated, can be sold to different industries for a broad range of purposes. Lubricants can be sold to industrial plants immediately after distillation, but other products require more refining before reaching the final user. Major refineries have the capacity to process hundreds of thousand barrels of crude oil daily.
In the industry, the refining process is commonly called the “downstream” sector, while raw crude oil production is known as the “upstream” sector. The term downstream is associated with the concept that oil is sent down the product value chain to an oil refinery to be processed into fuel. The downstream stage also includes the actual sale of petroleum products to other businesses, governments or private individuals.
- Crude oil is piped in and heated. As the different chemicals (or ‘fractions’) in the oil get hotter they start to boil and turn into gases (or ‘evaporate’).
- Each fraction boils at a different temperature. The ones with the lowest boiling points stay as gases for longest. They rise to the top of the column as they cool. The liquids with higher boiling points do not stay as gases for long, so they do not rise far.
- As each gas cools it turns back into a liquid (or ‘condenses’). The condensing liquids are collected at different levels in the column.
- Oil is full of useful chemicals. Did you know we get fuels, soaps, tar and some of the ingredients for drugs from the chemicals in oil?
- Certain fractions are mixed to give plastic making chemicals.
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