Reply #9: Refining is more like seperating. [View All]

Oil is complex jumble of various hydrocarbons.

The purpose of refining is to separate them out.



Of course the large component of end use waste is CO2. Of which we put billions of tons into the "trash can in the sky".

You can't turn 1 barrel of oil into a barrel of gasoline. It doesn't work that. Way you can simply "seperate" a barrel of oil (42 gallons) in x gallons of gasoline, y gallons of diesel, z gallons of heating oil.

By controlling the temperature in cracking stack they can overweight one product or another but there is a limit to how much gasoline for example you can get from single barrel of oil.

Since oil is expensive and it will break down into 10 or so different products we have found industrial uses for all the products.