Math Is Fun Forum

Jai Ganesh · 2024-03-02 17:58:11

Oil

Gist

Oil is any of numerous unctuous combustible substances that are liquid or can be liquefied easily on warming, are soluble in ether but not in water, and leave a greasy stain on paper or cloth.

Summary

Oil is any greasy substance that is liquid at room temperature and insoluble in water. There are many types, such as essential oil; orris oil; mineral oil; whale oil; pine oil; linseed oil; perilla oil; fish oil; tall oil; citronella oil. There is also cooking oil, such as olive, vegetable, Canola, and argan.

Fixed oils and fats have the same chemical composition: they consist chiefly of glycerides, resulting from a reaction between an alcohol called glycerol and certain members of a group of compounds known as fatty acids. Along with proteins and carbohydrates, the glyceride oils and fats constitute the three main classes of food. Besides their nutritive importance, these oils have a variety of industrial uses. Linseed, tung, and other drying oils (i.e., those that are highly unsaturated) and large quantities of soybean, sunflower, and safflower oils are used in paints, varnishes, and alkyd resins. Such oils are particularly well suited for this application because, when exposed to air, they absorb oxygen and polymerize readily, forming thin layers as a skin or protective film. Considerable quantities of specialty oils and sulfonated oils are used in leather dressing and textile manufacture. Some other glyceride oils have properties of medicinal value. Castor oil, for example, has a strong purgative action; fish-liver oils are sources of vitamins A and D; and others such as lard, olive oil, and almond oil serve as vehicles in pharmaceutical preparations. Chaulmoogra oil, which contains unique fatty acids with a cyclic (cyclopentenyl) structure, has been used in the treatment of Hansen’s disease (leprosy).

Details

An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated lipids that are liquid at room temperature.

The general definition of oil includes classes of chemical compounds that may be otherwise unrelated in structure, properties, and uses. Oils may be animal, vegetable, or petrochemical in origin, and may be volatile or non-volatile. They are used for food (e.g., olive oil), fuel (e.g., heating oil), medical purposes (e.g., mineral oil), lubrication (e.g. motor oil), and the manufacture of many types of paints, plastics, and other materials. Specially prepared oils are used in some religious ceremonies and rituals as purifying agents.

Etymology

First attested in English 1176, the word oil comes from Old French oile, from Latin oleum, which in turn comes from the Greek (elaion), "olive oil, oil" and that from (elaia), "olive tree", "olive fruit". The earliest attested forms of the word are the Mycenaean Greek written in the Linear B syllabic script.

Types:

Organic oils

Organic oils are produced in remarkable diversity by plants, animals, and other organisms through natural metabolic processes. Lipid is the scientific term for the fatty acids, steroids and similar chemicals often found in the oils produced by living things, while oil refers to an overall mixture of chemicals. Organic oils may also contain chemicals other than lipids, including proteins, waxes (class of compounds with oil-like properties that are solid at common temperatures) and alkaloids.

Lipids can be classified by the way that they are made by an organism, their chemical structure and their limited solubility in water compared to oils. They have a high carbon and hydrogen content and are considerably lacking in oxygen compared to other organic compounds and minerals; they tend to be relatively nonpolar molecules, but may include both polar and nonpolar regions as in the case of phospholipids and steroids.

Mineral oils

Crude oil, or petroleum, and its refined components, collectively termed petrochemicals, are crucial resources in the modern economy. Crude oil originates from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil. The name "mineral oil" is a misnomer, in that minerals are not the source of the oil—ancient plants and animals are. Mineral oil is organic. However, it is classified as "mineral oil" instead of as "organic oil" because its organic origin is remote (and was unknown at the time of its discovery), and because it is obtained in the vicinity of rocks, underground traps, and sands. Mineral oil also refers to several specific distillates of crude oil.

Applications:

Cooking

Several edible vegetable and animal oils, and also fats, are used for various purposes in cooking and food preparation. In particular, many foods are fried in oil much hotter than boiling water. Oils are also used for flavoring and for modifying the texture of foods (e.g. stir fry). Cooking oils are derived either from animal fat, as butter, lard and other types, or plant oils from olive, maize, sunflower and many other species.

Cosmetics

Oils are applied to hair to give it a lustrous look, to prevent tangles and roughness and to stabilize the hair to promote growth.

Religion

Oil has been used throughout history as a religious medium. It is often considered a spiritually purifying agent and is used for anointing purposes. As a particular example, holy anointing oil has been an important ritual liquid for Judaism and Christianity.

Health

Oils have been consumed since ancient times. Oils hold lots of fats and medical properties. A good example is olive oil. Olive oil holds a lot of fats within it which is why it was also used in lighting in ancient Greece and Rome. So people would use it to bulk out food so they would have more energy to burn through the day. Olive oil was also used to clean the body in this time as it would trap the moisture in the skin while pulling the grime to the surface. It was used as an ancient form of unsophisticated soap. It was applied on the skin then scrubbed off with a wooden stick pulling off the excess grime and creating a layer where new grime could form but be easily washed off in the water as oil is hydrophobic. Fish oils hold the omega-3 fatty acid. This fatty acid helps with inflammation and reduces fat in the bloodstream.

Painting

Color pigments are easily suspended in oil, making it suitable as a supporting medium for paints. The oldest known extant oil paintings date from 650 AD.

Heat transfer

Oils are used as coolants in oil cooling, for instance in electric transformers. Heat transfer oils are used both as coolants, for heating (e.g. in oil heaters) and in other applications of heat transfer.

Lubrication

Given that they are non-polar, oils do not easily adhere to other substances. This makes them useful as lubricants for various engineering purposes. Mineral oils are more commonly used as machine lubricants than biological oils are. Whale oil is preferred for lubricating clocks, because it does not evaporate, leaving dust, although its use was banned in the US in 1980.

It is a long-running myth that spermaceti from whales has still been used in NASA projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager probe because of its extremely low freezing temperature. Spermaceti is not actually an oil, but a mixture mostly of wax esters, and there is no evidence that NASA has used whale oil.

Fuel

Some oils burn in liquid or aerosol form, generating light, and heat which can be used directly or converted into other forms of energy such as electricity or mechanical work. In order to obtain many fuel oils, crude oil is pumped from the ground and is shipped via oil tanker or a pipeline to an oil refinery. There, it is converted from crude oil to diesel fuel (petrodiesel), ethane (and other short-chain alkanes), fuel oils (heaviest of commercial fuels, used in ships/furnaces), gasoline (petrol), jet fuel, kerosene, benzene (historically), and liquefied petroleum gas. A 42-US-gallon (35 imp gal; 160 L) barrel of crude oil produces approximately 10 US gallons (8.3 imp gal; 38 L) of diesel, 4 US gallons (3.3 imp gal; 15 L) of jet fuel, 19 US gallons (16 imp gal; 72 L) of gasoline, 7 US gallons (5.8 imp gal; 26 L) of other products, 3 US gallons (2.5 imp gal; 11 L) split between heavy fuel oil and liquified petroleum gases, and 2 US gallons (1.7 imp gal; 7.6 L) of heating oil. The total production of a barrel of crude into various products results in an increase to 45 US gallons (37 imp gal; 170 L).

In the 18th and 19th centuries, whale oil was commonly used for lamps, which was replaced with natural gas and then electricity.

Chemical feedstock

Crude oil can be refined into a wide variety of component hydrocarbons. Petrochemicals are the refined components of crude oil and the chemical products made from them. They are used as detergents, fertilizers, medicines, paints, plastics, synthetic fibers, and synthetic rubber.

Organic oils are another important chemical feedstock, especially in green chemistry.

Additional Information

In general, oil is a liquid that is made up of organic molecules. However, in the context of the world's energy sector oil, or more specifically, crude oil is the liquid fossil fuel that is extracted from the ground. Roughly 1/3 of the world's primary energy comes from this primary fuel. Chemically, oil is composed mainly out of carbon and hydrogen with other trace elements. Since oil is made mostly out of carbon and hydrogen atoms, it is known as a hydrocarbon (although from a chemical standpoint, it's often not a true hydrocarbon). The specific chemical makeup of crude oil can vary drastically depending on where it was drilled and under which conditions it was formed.

Oil formed millions of years ago when living organic matter died and was buried before it could be decomposed in the presence of air. This locked the carbon underground where heat and pressure led to chemical and physical changes. These changes, over long periods of time, transformed the once-photosynthetic energy from the Sun into the energy stored in the oil itself. Because oil is the main liquid component of petroleum, it is referred to as a petrochemical.

History

Oil has been used extensively through history, even when not being used to fuel vehicles or generate electricity. Historically, oil was used as a waterproofing agent and in some medicines, but was found only in natural seeps where the oil came above ground. On August 27, 1859 oil was pumped out of the ground for the first time by Edwin Drake in Pennsylvania and thousands of wells have been drilled since. Initially, most oil was turned into kerosene and used as fuel for lamps, but over time it grew to be used for fuelling cars and generating electricity.

Extraction

Conventional oil is held beneath the ground in traps or reservoirs, held in the tiny pore spaces of porous and permeable rock. Unconventional oil, primarily shale oil is held tightly in non-permeable shale deposits and thus more difficult to extract, requiring hydraulic fracturing to access. Generally, extraction requires a well that is drilled into a reservoir containing crude oil. The well can be vertical, directional, or horizontal depending on how much access to the deposit is needed. Directional and horizontal drilling allows more of the well to be in the deposit itself, increasing the flow of the oil. After this, the oil is extracted and refined. It can be distilled or undergo hydrocarbon cracking to create products and fuels that will be useful.

Use

Oil is used for many different things, and is used extensively for transportation. Some ways that oil can be used either before or after refining are:

* Transportation Fuels
* Fertilizer
* Heating
* Plastics
* Solvents
* Electrical Generation

Some of these uses require more refining of crude oil to become useful, but they all utilize oil in some way. According to the EIA, the majority of oil usage in the United States is from transportation (through the use of gasoline and diesel) accounting for 2/3 of all the oil used.

Oil is particularly useful as a fuel because of its high energy density. As previously mentioned, the original energy source of oil is the Sun, as the energy stored within dead organic matter is what creates crude oil over time. When burned in the presence of oxygen, oil undergoes a hydrocarbon combustion reaction, creating carbon dioxide and water vapour. The energy released during combustion is dependent on the energy density of the specific substance undergoing combustion. Crude oil has a relatively high energy density, with 1 kilogram of crude oil containing .

Environmental Impacts

Although oil is currently an extremely important fuel, the production of carbon dioxide through the combustion of crude oil and its refined products is contributing to climate change. In addition to carbon dioxide and other emissions produced during the burning of oil products, the production, transport, refining, and drilling processes all have their own associated environmental impacts. Some chemicals produced contribute to smog, while others are greenhouse gases that contribute to the warming of the Earth. Some of the more harmful pollutants include NOx and carbon monoxide. Atmospheric emissions are not the only issue, as the destruction of land used during extraction and the possibility of an oil spill can destroy potentially significant ecological areas.

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Math Is Fun Forum

#1 2024-03-02 17:58:11

Oil

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