Making crude oil useful - Fractional Distillation

A Hydrocarbon is made up of molecules containing carbon and hydrogen only.

Crude oil is a mixture of many types of oil, which are all hydrocarbons. To seperate these different oils into seperate oils, we use a method called fractional distillation.

In fractional distillation takes place in a metal container, called a fractionating column. Attached to this column, are multiple exiting stations, these are located in different heights of this column, to allow the seperated hydrocarbons to exits the column in the correct state.

The heat of the fractionating column differs, as there is a temperature gradient. This means that the bottom temperature is different to the top. in our case the bottom is hotter than the top. This is because oil…