Petroleum Refining For Non-Technical People Quiz

Answer: It is pumped from wells drilled into the ground.

Crude oil reserves lie hundreds or thousands of feet below the surface of the earth. Oil companies drill down into prospective reservoirs to find the oil and pump it to the surface. Of course, many of the wells drilled are 'dry holes', meaning that no commercial quantities of oil are found there.
If you answered 'Texas', you're probably a Texan.

Answer: It is heated, and the water and salts are removed.

Raw crude oil contains water and salt that would interfere with the refining equipment. Initially, the oil is heated to lower the viscosity of all the fluids involved, and then run through an electronic grid that makes saltwater fall out of the oil.

Answer: A process in which oil is separated into its different components.

Crude oil is a mixture of oil compounds that are separated by multiple boiling and condensing steps into various components. In a distillation tower, the lightest fractions go to the top, and the heaviest components go to the bottom, with intermediate cuts in between.

Answer: Sulfur

Sulfur comes out of the refinery as a by-product. Elemental sulfur is yellow in color and leaves the plant as a hot liquid in insulated trucks or rail cars to be sold to chemical plants. The removal of sulfur from the oil products means that the sulfur emissions from burning the oil are greatly reduced.

Answer: Breaking large oil molecules down into lighter ones by the use of heat and catalyst.

Crude oil contains a large percentage of heavy oil compounds that need to be broken down in order to create more useful products. Cracking units use high temperatures and catalyst to break down the heavier components into lighter ones. Operating temperatures in some cracking units can exceed 1300 degrees F.
Also, because the products are lower density than the feedstock, cracking units actually produce more gallons than they take in.

Answer: Steam

Considering the temperatures involved in the refining process, liquid water is the enemy of many process units. Steam is produced in large quantities by the refinery and is consumed internally. Heavy water is one of the building blocks for nuclear weapons and has nothing to do with oil refining.

Answer: naphtha

Naphtha is a low-octane fraction of crude oil that is upgraded before being blended into gasoline. Naphtha is the most commonly misspelled word in refining terminology.
NAFTA is the North American Free Trade Agreement that was ratified in the early 1990s.

Answer: A measure of how well gasoline will perform in a car engine.

Octane rating is a key measure of gasoline quality. If the octane is too low, your engine will 'knock' and not run well. If it's too high, the refiner is throwing away money (or you are paying too much for the fuel).

Answer: On roads and parking lots

Many plants produce asphalt for sale to paving contractors. Asphalt has to be kept above 400 degrees F to make it flow as a liquid.
Asphalt is also used in roofing shingles.

Answer: Flare

The flare is a safety outlet for a refinery's operation. Gases that escape overpressure devices in the plant are burned in the flare. If you pass a plant and the flare is burning brightly, they are having operational problems.

I once worked at a refinery where one of the neighbors called up on a Saturday afternoon to say that they were having a party in their back yard that evening, and they would appreciate it if we could make the flare burn heavy for them that night to help light up the yard.