When one speaks of crude oil, or petroleum, one may imagine this particular image in mind: a drilling platform or vast dry land with a big black fountain of oil. And from that crude oil, comes different products ranging from the clear petroleum that is used to fuel cars, or to black tires, to plastics, [...]

In the previous article fractional distillation has been discussed. It again utilizes the different boiling points of the components of crude oil, enabling their separation through distillation. These fractions are then collected for further processing and refinement. One must take note that fractional distillation is an efficient but an imperfect process – the isolated compounds [...]