Distillation involves heating crude oil until it vaporizes and feeding it into a tall fractionation column. As the vapors rise, they cool and condense on trays at different heights based on their specific boiling points. Lighter molecules like propane and naphtha rise to the top, while heavier molecules like fuel oil settle at the bottom. This physical separation is the first step in petroleum refining before any chemical conversion takes place.
Heard on the job
The crude feed is running heavy, so we need to monitor the temperatures in the atmospheric distillation tower.
Also heard as
- fractionation