Siding and Your Home: What You Need to Know

Crude oil is the base of a lot of products. Gasoline, heating oil, diesel, aviation fuel, and kerosene all come from crude oil. Kerosene has multiple uses for a myriad of people. 

Kerosene Production

The first part, after getting the crude oil out of the ground, of producing any of the products produced by crude oil is to start separating it. The crude is generally separated by weight. The way to get to those different weights is through a process called distillation. This process involves sending the oil into a chamber where it can be heated. As it is heated, the lighter parts of the oil start separating. Some turn into gasses and are captured by a condenser, where they are cooled and turned back into liquid. Other things stay liquid but start layering on top of the crude. Those liquids are able to separate and layer because they all have different relative densities as compared to the base crude oil. Those relative densities and the different temperatures at which some of the products gasify make it easy to separate them out to be further refined and purified. 

In particular, kerosene, once it has been separated out from the rest of the crude can go through the distillation process several times on its own so that it further purified. Each time it gets re-distilled, it leaves behind impurities. 

Kerosene Uses

Kerosene, also known by names like white gas, used to be used as a primary source of lighting before electricity came through and eliminated the need for it.  

• Cooking fuel: Kerosene is often found as a cooking fuel for things like camp stoves. Hikers and campers can carry around small tanks of kerosene and attached their cooking stoves to those small canisters to make their food. 
• Heating oil: There are a lot of heaters that use kerosene as their fuel source. Those heaters have both residential and industrial settings. For example, many people use kerosene-powered space heaters in their homes either as a primary heat source or as a boost for their heater. On construction sites, kerosene-powered heaters may be used to help dry concrete or to heat up enclosed work areas during the winter so that workers can do inside work, or can take a warm break from working outdoors. 
• Appliance fuel: There are things like refrigerators that run on kerosene. Those appliances can be found in homes where electricity isn't used, for whatever reason. 

Kerosene is just one of the products that comes from crude oil when it's refined. Kerosene has many uses in the modern world and will continue to be a necessary product. 

For an oil and fuel company, contact a company such as Small & Sons Oil Dist Co.