Texas City Boat Trip.
Violeta Leilani Curameng.
Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, Texas.
INTRODUCTION
The Valero Refinery of Texas City is located in the Texas City Ship Channel in the Gulf Coast region. The Valero Company “is an international manufacturer of transportation fuels, petrochemical products and power” (1). Originally acquired in 1997, the refinery has been through a series of major upgrades and extensions (1). Valero is an independent refiner that purchases a variety of oils such as crude oil and sour and residual oil (2).
The complex refining and distillation processes for Valero can be compared to the experiments performed in an Organic chemistry lab. From what the company’s procedures are to what the Lab
…show more content…
Products of this process can include, pet coke, gasoline, jet fuels, diesels, and liquid petroleum (8).
Figure 2: The Refining Process
Crude oil is heated through the bottom of the distillation tower and then each of the chemical compounds in the crude oil are sorted into different units based on their boiling points. Products of this process can include, pet coke, gasoline, jet fuels, diesels, and liquid petroleum (8).
Fractional Distillation. Process.
Fractional distillation is a series of simple and small scaled distillations. Instead of having multiple condensers and receivers the evaporation and condensation cycles happen in one distillation column (4). Figure 3 shows the setup of a fractional distillation apparatus.
Figure 3: Fractional Distillation Apparatus.
Distillation is used to separate mixtures that do not work well together. The simple distillation performed during lab is done to obtain a pure liquid, such as recycling waste acetone to retrieve purified acetone (4).
DISSCUSSION.
Comparison of the Processes.
In the lab a thermometer is placed into the fractionating column to measure the temperature of the vapors produced from the heated liquid. At the Valero Refinery to measure the temperature of the crude oil in the column, thermocouples are used and transmit a radio signal to a control room that keeps track of the heating status. This process Valero
* Lighter fraction make better fuels as they ignite more easily and burn well, with cleaner (less smoky) flame.
Abstract The purpose of this experiment is to separate a mixture of hexane and toluene by collecting fractions through simple and fractional distillation. Because hexane’s boiling point is about 68°C and the boiling point of toluene is 111°C, the two compounds distill at different times. Pure products will be analyzed with gas chromatography to determine the success of the distillation. For easy separations, a simple distillation apparatus probably will suffice, but for more difficult separations, a fractional distillation apparatus will be used in this lab. The goal is to show that fractional distillation separates the two compounds more completely because less material is lost. In conclusion the fractional distillation indeed separates the two compound
Method: Distillation is based on the fact that the matter can exist in three phases - - solid, liquid and gas. As the temperature of a pure substance is increased, it passes through these phases, making a transition at a specific temperature from solid to liquid (melting point--mp) and then at a higher temperature from liquid to gas (boiling point--bp). Distillation involves evaporating a liquid into a gas phase, then condensing the gas back into a liquid and collecting the liquid in a clean receiver. Substances that have a higher boiling point than the desired material will not distill at the
In this experiment, distillations were done. This is a technique that utilizes the differing boiling points of two or more compounds in a mixture in order to separate the compounds from the mixture. The way fractional distillation works is that the initial mixture is boiled up to the point of the lower boiling point compound; this compound then evaporates. This compound is then
Simple distillation is more effective when the two components of a mixture have a difference in boiling point that is greater than 50°C. This large difference makes the need for theoretical plates non-existent since there is no need for multiple distillations per fraction. We can collect all necessary data from a simple distillation fraction using a gas chromatograph. The gas chromatograph vaporizes the injected sample and it begins to undergo partitioning. It is pushed into a small heated column that is coated in the liquid form of the sample. The longer the substance stays inside the column before passing over the heated wire, the longer the retention time is. The retention time is utilized to identify the substance, while the number of peaks shows how many substances are present, and the size of the peaks show how much percentage each substance occupies in a sample. The intrinsic properties of isopropyl acetate and toluene allow analysis of the provided data to become quite simple. Isopropyl acetate has a lower boiling point because it has a relatively low dipole moment and only one double bond. Thus, the intermolecular forces are relatively low in isopropyl acetate leading to a low boiling point. Toluene has a higher boiling point because the methyl group, attached to the benzene
(c) (2 pts) Imagine that you wanted to perform a distillation at your own home (remember, distillation as a technique is not illegal—it is only illegal if you use it to produce alcohol), but you did not have the fancy lab equipment that you saw in the video. How could you do it? How could you improvise in terms of equipment? Explain the entire setup in detail and how the
Simple distillation is a separation technique which can be used to separate and purify distillates from a liquid mixture which ideally contains one volatile and one non-volatile compound. If such ideal conditions are not possible—as is usually the case—then simple distillation can be applied as long as the liquid in question is composed of compounds that differ in volatility such that their boiling points differ by at least 40 to 50 degrees Celsius. Because
1.) Briefly explain the concept of steam distillation. What is the difference between a simple distillation and a steam distillation? When a mixture of two immiscible liquids are distilled it is referred to as codistillation. This process is referred to as steam distillation when one of the liquids is water. This distillation is used to separate organic liquids from natural products and reaction mixtures in which the final product results in high boiling residues such as tars, inorganic salts, and other relatively involatile components. It is useful in isolating volatile oils from various parts of plants and not useful in the final purification of a
Distillation is a method of separating two volatile chemicals on the basis of their differing boiling points. During this lab, students were given 30 mL of an unknown solution containing two colorless chemicals. Because the chemicals may have had a relatively close boiling point, we had to employ a fractional distillation over a simple distillation. By adding a fractionating column between the boiling flask and the condenser, we were able to separate the liquids more efficiently due to the fact that more volatile liquids tend to push towards the top of the fractionating column, thereby leaving the liquid with the lower boiling point towards the bottom. After obtaining the distillates, we utilized a gas chromatograph in order to analyze the volatile substances in the gas phase and determine their composition percentage of the initial solution. Overall, through this lab we were able to enhance our knowledge on the practical utilization of chemical theories, and thus also demonstrated technical fluency involving the equipment.
Valero possesses a vast amount of different raw materials, allowing for it to produce many different types of fuel such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, and several others. Every day it produces at least thirty-five thousand barrels of gasoline, a seemingly insane amount to me because the refinery covers just seven hundred twenty-two acres, and uses only certain
The purpose of this experiment was to separate a two component mixture using fractional distillation. Distillation is a process of vaporization than condensation of a substance, used primarily to separate substances from a mixture when there are different boiling points. Fractional distillation is when the mixture has multiple substances with similar boiling points, and a fractional column is used to create multiple vaporization/condensation cycles. Fractional distillation is important when two or more substances need to be separated, but they have similar boiling points.
Another type of refining is called polymerization, which is the opposite of cracking in that it combines the smaller molecules into bigger ones that then could be used as liquid fuels.
The main objective of the distillation lab was to identify the composition of an unknown binary solution. The only known component is that the boiling point of the two components were at least 40˚C apart in boiling points. Due to the difference in boiling points, fractional distillation would be an easy way to determine the identity of each component of the binary solution. In the experiment, 30mL of the unknown binary solution was ran through the fractional distillation apparatus. As the solution boiled, gas from the unknown solution ran through the column, which had a temperature gradient to allow rapid and repeated distillations, and one of the components were isolated. By recording the temperature and amount of
A petroleum refinery is any facility engaged in producing gasoline, gasoline blending stocks, naphtha, kerosene, distillate fuel oils, residual fuel oils, lubricants, or asphalt (bitumen) through distillation of petroleum or through redistillation, cracking, or reforming of unfinished petroleum derivatives.