Crude Oil to Petroleum Ratio
Posted by Oilism.com on December 28th, 2007 at 07:41pm
Do you know you only need 42 gallons of crude oil to get 44 gallons of petroleum heating oil in return, $$$. All this without adding anything else to it even natural gasses and other secondary oil refinery products excluded. Is it true? How on earth is this possible?
First the following about the oil refinery process
If you boil crude oil around 550 degrees Celsius inside a distillation tower the basic parts of the crude oil, steams and condensate. This gassy substance sticks to the walls of the distillation tower. Within this distillation process at different heights in the tower, different products are condensing and sticking to the tower walls.

Thicker oil products are at the bottom and lighter oil products such as gasoline and thinner are at the surface of the oil tank. In the end of the refinery process 42 gallons of crude oil is converted to over thousands of m3 natural gas, which eventually re condenses into a fluid substance again. Finally, when the complete process is done, 44 gallons of various petroleum products are sticking on the walls of the distillation tower ready to be sold for by approximately 55 gallon a barrel. An other funny detail is that only 42 gals of crude oil is allowed for each barrel, this because of the risks of expansion, gas forming and other transport problems. Ok right! A ratio of 1:1,04761 to convert Crude to Petroleum.. but how??!
This oil secret is simple;
When the natural gas steams out of the boiling crude oil mass in the tower, new gas forms appear from the basic parts that are boiling and steaming from the first part of this story. The new gasses contain new elements which weren’t existing in the oil substance before the heating process. But however these gasses also will condensate into a liquid fluid oil product, on top of the volume of crude oil your started. We can be prood on our Oil Companies for being so clever.
Under Oil Fun+ Oil Theory+ Oil and gas
2 Comments for Crude Oil to Petroleum Ratio
1. Uri Liberman | December 29th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Very interesting. Balance of elements in price structure are taxes and refinery’s profit???
2. JK Smith | March 25th, 2008 at 8:07 am
I alway thought of the crude oil to products ratio like this:
Tar and diesel are big molecules and gasoline and propane are small - when blended they have a smaller volume than when separated.
It’s like grains of sand (light ends) fitting between big stones (heavy ends).
You bring up a good point - it’s a volume (not mass) based business and the total product volume increases due to the properties of the products.
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