OIL: composition, history, use

Oil - one of the representatives of the class of liquid minerals (besides it, it also includes artesian water). Its name is from the Persian "oil." Together with ozocerite and natural gas, it forms a group of minerals called petrolites.

WHAT IS OIL FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY

It is a fatty, oily substance, the color and density of which varies depending on the place of extraction. It can be bright green or cherry red, yellow, brown, black, and in rare cases - colorless. The fluidity of oil is also very different: one will be like water, the other will be viscous. But what is related to each other so different in physical properties is their chemical composition, which is always a complex mixture of hydrocarbons. For other properties there are impurities - sulfur, nitrogen and other compounds, of which the smell depends primarily on the presence of aromatic hydrocarbons and sulfur compounds.

The name of the main component of oil - "hydrocarbons" exhaustively speaks about its composition. These are substances consisting of carbon and hydrogen atoms, whose general formula is written as CxHy. The simplest representative of this series is methane CH4, present in any oil.

The elementary composition of the average oil can be represented as a percentage:

• 84% of carbon
• 14% hydrogen
• 1-3% sulfur
• <1% oxygen
• <1% of metals
• <1% of salts

FEATURES OF OIL AND GAS OILING

Oil and gas are usually fellow travelers, that is, they are found together, but it only happens when the depth is from 1 to 6 kilometers. Most of the deposits are in this range, and the combinations of oil and gas are different. If the depth is less than a kilometer, then there is one oil, and more than 6 kilometers - only gas.

The layer where oil is found is called the collector. Usually these are porous rocks that can be likened to a solid sponge that collects and retains oil, gas, and other mobile fluids (for example, water). Another prerequisite for the accumulation of oil is the presence of a reservoir-cap, which prevents further movement of the fluid, because of which it is trapped in a trap. Geologists are looking for such traps, which are then called deposits, but this is not quite the right name. Because oil or gas originated much lower in layers under high pressure. In the upper layers, they fall due to the fact that, as fluids are light, they tend to go up. They are literally squeezed to the surface of the earth.

WHERE AND WHEN OIL WAS OCCURRED

To understand the mechanism of oil formation, you need to move mentally to millions of years ago. According to the biogenic theory (it is also a theory of organic origin), from the Carboniferous period (350 million years BC) and up to the middle of the Paleogene (50 million years BC), numerous shallow areas became places of accumulation of remains of organic Life - dying microorganisms and algae fell to the bottom, forming bottom layers of organic matter. Very slowly, these layers were closed by other, inorganic - deposits of sand, for example, and lowered lower and lower. The pressure increased, the closing layers hardened, there was no oxygen access to the organics. In the darkness under the influence of pressure and temperature there was a transformation of the remains into simple hydrocarbons, some of which became gaseous, some - liquid and solid.

As soon as the fluids were given the opportunity to escape from the parent reservoir, they rushed up until they were trapped. However, the rise also took a long time. In the traps, the fluids are usually distributed as follows: from above gas, then oil, and at the very bottom - water. This is due to the density of each of them. If, on the way to the fluids, an impermeable layer did not meet, they found themselves on the surface where their destruction and dispersion occurred. Natural oil outlets on the surface are usually lakes of dense Malta and semi-liquid asphalt, or it impregnates sand, forming so-called bituminous sands.

HUMAN HISTORY OF OIL

The output of oil to the surface could not help attracting the attention of an ancient man. About the earliest stages of dating there is almost no information, but in a period of well-developed material culture, oil was used in construction - this is evidenced by data from Iraq, where evidence was found of using oil to protect houses from moisture. In Egypt, found the flammability of oil, and it was used for lighting. In addition, it has found application in mummification and as a sealant for boats.

Being rare, oil became a valuable commodity in ancient times: the Babylonians traded it in the Middle East. It is assumed that it was this trade that gave rise to many cities and villages. It is also possible that oil was used to create one of the famous "wonders of the world" - the hanging gardens of the Semiramis. There it was useful as a sealant that does not allow water to pass through.

The Chinese were the first to not be satisfied with the sources coming to the surface. They invented well drilling using hollow bamboo trunks with a metal "drill" at the end. At first they were looking for salt sources for salt extraction, but then they found oil and gas. With the help of the latter, they evaporated the salt and set it on fire. There is no data on the use of oil in China for that period.

Another ancient method of using oil was the treatment of her skin diseases. About this practice among the inhabitants of the Absheron peninsula is said in the notes of Marco Polo.

For the first time oil in Russia is mentioned only in the XV century. Historians have found references to the collection of crude oil on the Ukhta River, where it formed a film on the surface of the water. There she was collected and made from her medicine or light source - usually it was impregnation for torches.

A new application of oil was found only in the XIX century, when the kerosene lamp was invented. It was developed by the Polish chemist Ignaty Lukasevich. It is possible that he was also the inventor of the method of extracting kerosene from oil. A few years before that Canadian Abraham Gesner came up with a way to get kerosene from coal, but getting it out of oil turned out to be more profitable.

Kerosene was actively used for lighting, so the demand for it grew constantly. Therefore, it was necessary to decide the issue of its extraction. The beginning of the oil industry was laid in 1847 in Baku, where the first oil well was drilled. Soon there were so many wells that Baku was nicknamed the Black City.

But those wells were still drilled by hand. The first well, drilled by the steam engine, which set the drilling machine in motion, appeared in Russia in 1864 in the Kuban region. Two years later, mechanical drilling of another well was completed at the Kudakinsky deposit.

In the world, the beginning of industrial oil production was laid in 1859 by Edwin Drake, who drilled the first oil well in the US on August 27 this year - it had a depth of 21.2 meters and was located in the town of Titusville in Pennsylvania, where even earlier when drilling artesian wells They found oil.

Drilling of oil wells sharply reduced the cost of oil production and led to the fact that this product soon became the most important for modern civilization. At the same time, this was the beginning of the development of the oil industry.

APPLICATION OF OIL

At present, we no longer use oil in its pure form. However, there are many products of its processing, without which our world is unthinkable. After the first distillation, five types of fuel are produced:

• Aviation and automobile gasoline
• kerosene
• rocket fuel
• diesel fuel
• gas
• Fuel oil

The black oil fraction is the source of another series of products of further distillation:

• bitumen
• paraffin
• Oils
• Boiler fuel

The further fate of bitumen is its connection with gravel and sand to obtain asphalt. Another oil product, which is also used for road works, is tar, which is a concentrate of oil residues after its distillation. Another residue, petroleum coke, is used in the manufacture of ferroalloys and electrodes.

The chemical industry uses the simplest hydrocarbons as a raw material for reactions that change the formula of compounds. As a result, they produce plastics, rubber, textiles, fertilizers, dyes, polyethylene and polypropylene, as well as many household chemicals.

Source: http://promdevelop.ru/