es of petroleum; for example, Bitumen. It is formed by crude oil that has migrated toward the Earth's surface and has been stripped of its lighter fractions by descending water. •The components of Petroleum: (A) hydrocarbons. I will spend a lot of time on this segment, as it allows a lot of discussion about hydrocarbons, in which I can discuss chemical compounds and molecular structures and subsequent properties. Can discuss paraffins, naphthenes, aromatics in detail.(B) Non-hydrocarbons. Other constituents of petroleum include sulfur, oxygen, nitrogen, and the metals nickel and vanadium. Most of these impurities are removed during refining.•The refinery process; fractional distillation. This portion of my paper will include several diagrams, and detailed explanations of the entire process, starting from the geological techniques used to locate oil. Fractional distillation: a process which separates the crude oil into fractions of differing volatility. After the distillation, other physical methods are employed to separate the mixtures, including absorption, adsorption, solvent extraction, and crystallization. (All of these will be examined in depth). After physical separation into such constituents as light and heavy naphthas, kerosene, and light and heavy gas oils, selected petroleum fractions are subjected to chemical conversion processes, such as cracking and reforming to break the large molecules of heavier gas oils into the smaller molecules that form the lighter, more valuable naphtha fractions. Reforming changes the structure of straight-chain paraffin molecules into branched-chain isoparaffins and ring-shaped aromatics. ...
