Dienstag, 18. Mai 2010

Oil Refineries

A refinery is a factory. A refinery takes a raw material (crude oil) and transforms it into petrol and hundreds of other useful products. A typical large refinery costs billions of pounds to build and millions more to run and upgrade. It runs around the clock 365 days a year, employs hundreds of people and occupies as much land as several hundred football pitches.

A REFINERY breaks crude oil down into its various components, which then are selectively changed into new products. This process takes place inside a maze of pipes and vessels. The refinery is operated from a highly automated control room.

All refineries perform three basic steps:

  • Separation (fractional distillation)
  • Conversion (cracking and rearranging the molecules)
  • Treatment

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