An Overview Of The Petroleum Industry Part 1

in #steemstem6 years ago (edited)

Brief History OF Petroleum

As a certified Petroleum Engineer, I’ve always wanted to talk about petroleum on my blog but Time has been a major challenge. Well I’ve finally decided to drop a daily series on The petroleum Industry. Why I want it to be a daily series is to enable me make it short and fun. I don’t want to bore you with long post.


Credits
Petroleum dates back to a very long time, It is believed that Asphalt was used during the building of the tower of Babel.
It is also believed that the Indians of the pre-Columbian era in America knew and used oil, which served as waterproofing for boats.
For several centuries the Chinese used petroleum gas for cooking food.
However, before the second half of the eighteenth century the applications that were given to oil were very few.
It was Colonel Edwin L. Drake who drilled the first oil well in the world in 1859, in the United States, managing to extract oil from a depth of 21 meters.
It was also Drake who helped create a market for oil by successfully separating kerosene from it. This product replaced the whale oil used at that time as fuel in the lamps, whose consumption was causing the disappearance of these animals.
But it was not until 1895, with the appearance of the first automobiles, that gasoline was needed, that new fuel that in later years would be consumed in large quantities. On the eve of the First World War, before 1914, there were already more than one million vehicles that used gasoline in the world.
Indeed, the true proliferation of automobiles began when Henry Ford launched his famous model "T" in 1922. That year there were 18 million cars; for 1938 the number rose to 40 million, in 1956 to 100 million, and to more than 170 million for 1964. It is currently very difficult to estimate exactly how many hundreds of millions of gasoline vehicles exist in the world.
Logically, the consumption of crude oil to meet the demand for gasoline has grown in the same proportion. It is said that in the decade from 1957 to 1966 almost the same amount of oil was used as in the previous 100 years. These estimates also take into account the expenditure of aircraft with piston engines.
Subsequently, the turbine engines (jets) used today in commercial, civil and military aircraft were developed. These engines use the same fuel as the lamps of the last century, but with low sulfur content and low freezing temperature.
Of course, when turbine airplanes were introduced, the use of kerosene as fuel for lamps was almost nil, due to the discovery of electricity, in such a way that in 1964 about 80% of the total consumption of this was to make turbosine. The fraction of the crude oil that serves as energy is that of gas oil, which before 1910 was part of the heavy oils that constituted the waste of refineries. Gasoline consumption as a fuel began in 1910 when Admiral Fisher of the British fleet ordered the replacement of coal with diesel in all its ships. The best argument to make such a decision was the caloric superiority of this one in relation to the mineral coal, since the diesel generates approximately 10 500 calories / kg, while a good coal only provides 7,000 calories / kg.
Later the use of this energy in the merchant marine, in the steam generators, in the industrial furnaces and in the home heating was extended.
The use of diesel expanded quickly to diesel engines. Although Rudolph Diesel invented the engine that bears his name, shortly after the internal combustion engine was developed, its application was not very successful because it was originally designed to work with pulverized coal.

When finally the light fraction of the diesel was separated, which was called diesel, the engine of Rudolph Diesel began to find a wide development.
The main advantage of diesel engines in relation to internal combustion engines lies in the fact that they are more efficient, since they produce more mechanical work per liter of fuel. It is well known that our cars only take advantage of 22 to 24% of the energy consumed, while in diesel engines this advantage is 35%.
Therefore, these engines found rapid application in the ships of the military and merchant navy, in the locomotives of the railroads, in the heavy trucks, and in the agricultural tractors.
After this brief analysis of the history of the development and use of petroleum fuels, we clearly see that the greatest consumer of these fuels is the automobile.
This is due not only to the fact of having millions of vehicles with internal combustion engines in circulation, but also to the very low efficiency of their engines, since they would waste 75% of the generated energy, as mentioned above.
So, since the car is still the "king", most of the oil refineries are designed to supply gasoline to "His Majesty".
After the appearance of the car, the world began to move faster and faster, requiring day by day more powerful vehicles, and therefore better gasoline.
What are these better gasolines? How are they achieved? What are its consequences? What chemicals used to raise the octane rating of gasoline are the basis of synthetic fibers? What are the materials used to make more gasoline, which in turn serve as raw material to make synthetic detergents, plastics, solvents, lubricants, food, etc.?
These are some of the questions that I will try to answer in the Subsequent post, but the next post will be about the origins of oil and its composition.
I hope to leave everyone a petroleum Engineer when I finally conclude this class in months to come.
Thank you

References

(1) Wikipedia
(2) Environmental Literacy council


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