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Does the plant starts by boiling crude oil in low temperature to extract the "lightest" product first,

and then subsequently increase it's temperature until achieve the "heaviest"?

Or all done in single batch, where it condensed separately?

From what I summarize from multiple video, it seems the latter - It's done in only one batch.

But how come? Since they are differ in boiling point. This really puzzled me

Lorenz
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  • Crude has not been treated in "batches" for a hundred years. Processing is continuous. There area few exceptions such as some cokers are batch ( breaking of the highest boiling material/bitumen.) – blacksmith37 Oct 26 '21 at 14:39

2 Answers2

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The process is continuous, crude is fed into the fractional distillation column and the products come out at the relevant temperatures.

Solar Mike
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The following image shows a concept of the fractional distillation process.

enter image description here

Figure: crude oil fractional distillation (source: 123rf.com )

The crude oil is heated, and then as it cools down at higher level you get the different products.

NMech
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