Crude Oil & Fractional Distillation

01Crude Oil & Fractional Distillation

Crude oil

This section covers crude oil as a hydrocarbon mixture and why separating it makes its components more useful.

Crude oil as a mixture

Crude oil (petroleum): a hydrocarbon mixture in which alkanes make up the largest share.

  • Its alkanes can have straight or branched carbon chains.
  • The mixture contains hydrocarbon molecules of different sizes and therefore a range of boiling points.
  • Separating the mixture groups together hydrocarbons with similar properties, making the crude oil more useful.

The method used to separate these groups is fractional distillation.

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