Crude petroleum is of little use in its raw form; however, we can obtain various useful products out of it. Petroleum can be divided into products such as petrol, diesel, kerosene, naptha, etc. The process involved here is fractional distillation, in which the boiling point of various petroleum fractions is used to separate them.
Different components of petroleum have different numbers of carbon atoms; lower numbers of carbon atoms correspond to lower boiling points and higher numbers of carbon atoms correspond to a higher boiling point. When crude petroleum is heated, various fractions boil at different temperatures and rise to different heights in a distillation column. Based on their boiling points, they are collected at different heights. For example, naptha has a very low boiling point and is recovered near the top of the column. This is followed by gasoline, then kerosene, etc.
Fractional distillation of crude petroleum is responsible for providing us with our transport fuels.
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