Chief source: combustion of petroleum products

• Petroleum

• Chief source: combustion of petroleum products

• Petroleum has been used by humans for millennia, originally for fires and warfare. In the Middle East, oil fields were exploited for naptha, tar, and kerosene in the 8th to 12th centuries.

• These early users depended on seeps (like this modern one), where petroleum rises naturally because of subsurface pressure.

• Beverly
• Hillbillies
• theme

• The demand for petroleum on the world market grew slowly, but started to take off in the 1800s. Whale oil was replaced by kerosene lamps starting around 1860.

• Coal was still the major fuel source in the world until about 1940, when petroleum passed it and became the most valuable commodity in the global marketplace.

• Hydrocarbons: organic compounds consisting of H and C

• Petroleum: a thick, flammable, yellow-to-black mixture of solid, liquid, and gaseous hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the Earth's surface.

• Liquids

• Gases

• Solids (e.g. paraffin) are not abundant, but have many uses

• Crude oil

• methane

• Natural Gas

• propane

• pentane

• butane

• Condensate

• liquid droplets in gas

• after

• Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs)

• processing

• Crude oil

• * Liquid mixture of naturally occurring hydrocarbons

• (aka “oil”)

• * After refining: the chief source of transportation fuels

• Natural gas

• * After processing: used for power generation, residential,
• fertilizers, manufacturing, transportation (still very limited)

• * Gaseous mixture of naturally occurring hydrocarbons

• Combustion (burning) of hydrocarbons releases
• carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere

• Fuel + Oxygen Carbon dioxide + Water + Heat

• In words:

• CxHy + (x + y/4)O2 xCO2 + (y/2)H2O

• The general equation:

• C3H8 + 5O2 3CO2 + 4H2O

• E.g., for propane:

• residue

• fuel oil

• lubricants

• diesel

• kerosene

• gasoline

• naptha

• gases

• Fractional
• distillation
• in a refinery

• very schematic cartoon

• L.A. oil refinery

• Natural gas

• Almost always a mixture of gases; to be used as a fuel, extensive processing is required to produce pure methane.

• Petrochemicals

• Chemicals produced from petroleum

• The Graduate 1967

• “Plastics.”

• ALL PLASTICS are petrochemicals.

• polystyrene

• epoxies

• polycarbonate, etc.

• PVC

• solvents

• Other synthetic fibers, such as acrylics & dacron:
• clothing, yarn, rugs, rope, sails, grafts, containers, resins, etc.

• Polyester: The most widely used artificial fiber in the U.S. — apparel & home furnishings, plus bottles, fiberglass, LCDs, holograms, filters, insulators, auto body parts, and more.

• Apparel, carpets, musical strings, fishing line, racket strings, rope, auto parts, machine parts, sutures

• Nylon

• More uses

• sterilizers (food & medical supplies

• rubbing alcohol

• synthetic rubber

• MTBE

• detergents

• vinyl

• dyes

• phenols (antiseptics)

• TNT

• drugs

• packaging

• riot shields

• eyeglass lenses

• auto parts

• The inescapable fact: Modern developed societies depend on petroleum in innumerable ways. We are a petroleum-dependent society.

• “No civilization can survive the destruction of its resource base.” Bruce Sterling

• Also see Jared Diamond’s Collapse and
• Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies

• “The Prize”

• 20th century = “The Oil Century”

• “The lifeblood of modern civilization”

• “The foundation of modern society”

• Petroleum is a non-renewable resource
• that took millions of years to form.

• Our use of it has been unsustainable.

• Petrolia, Ontario

• 1858 North America’s first oil wells

• 1860 World’s first integrated oil company

• 1860–1900 “Oil boom” trained drillers who later dispersed around the planet: U.S., Middle East, South America, etc.

• Titusville, PA

• 1859 First U.S. drilling rig