Refining
Refining is the process of purification of a (1) substance or a (2) form. The term is usually used of a natural resource that is almost in a usable form, but which is more useful in its pure form. For instance, most types of natural petroleum will burn straight from the ground, but it will burn poorly and quickly clog an engine with residues and by-products. The term is broad, and may include more drastic transformations, such as the reduction of ore to metal (for which see Refining (metallurgy)). The refining of liquids is often accomplished by distillation or fractionation; this process is useful, for example, for isolating different fractions of petroleum. Gases can be refined in this way as well, by being cooled and/or compressed until they liquefy. Gases and liquids can also be refined by extraction with a selective solvent that dissolves away either the substance of interest, or the unwanted impurities. Many solids can be refined by growing crystals in a solution o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oil Refinery
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial processes, industrial process Factory, plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refining, refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, Bitumen, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum naphtha. Petrochemical feedstock like ethylene and propene, propylene can also be produced directly by Cracking (chemistry), cracking crude oil without the need of using refined products of crude oil such as naphtha. The crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as bulk liquid products. In 2020, the total capacity of global refineries for crude oil was about 101.2 million barrels per day. Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sugar Refinery
A sugar refinery is a refinery which processes raw sugar from cane or sugar extracted from beets into white refined sugar. Cane sugar mills traditionally produce raw sugar, which is sugar that still contains molasses, giving it coloration (and impurities) than the white sugar which is normally consumed in households and used as an ingredient in soft drinks and foods. Raw cane sugar does not need refining to be palatable. It is refined for reasons such as health, color, and the requirement for a pure sugar taste. Raw sugar is stable for transport and can be taken from mills to locations for processing into white sugar. Cane sugar mills / factories often produce a partially refined product called Plantation (or Mill) White for their local market, but this is inferior to white sugar made by refineries. Beet sugar factories can also produce raw sugar, but this has an unpleasant taste. There is no separate raw sugar stage to the process; the sugar extract from the beet i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zone Melting
Zone melting (or zone refining, or floating-zone method, or floating-zone technique) is a group of similar methods of purifying crystals, in which a narrow region of a crystal is melted, and this molten zone is moved through the crystal. The molten region melts impure solid at its forward edge and leaves a wake of purer material solidified behind it as it moves through the ingot. The impurities concentrate in the melt, and are moved to one end of the ingot. Zone refining was invented by John Desmond Bernal and further developed by William G. PfannWilliam G. Pfann (1966) ''Zone Melting'', 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons in Bell Labs as a method to prepare high-purity materials, mainly semiconductors, for manufacturing transistors. Its first commercial use was in germanium, refined to one atom of impurity per ten billion,”Zone melting”, entry in ''The World Book Encyclopedia'', Volume 21, W-X-Y-Z, 1973, page 501. but the process can be extended to virtually any solute–solvent sy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Refining (metallurgy)
In metallurgy, refining consists of purifying an impure metal. It is to be distinguished from other processes such as smelting and calcining in that those two involve a chemical change to the raw material, whereas in refining the final material is chemically identical to the raw material. Refining thus increases the purity of the raw material via processing. There are many processes including pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical techniques. Lead Cupellation One ancient process for extracting the silver from lead was cupellation. This process involved melting impure lead samples in a cupel, a small porous container designed for purification that would aid in the oxidation process, while being able to withstand the heat needed to melt these metals in a furnace. This reaction would oxidize the lead to litharge, along with any other impurities present, whereas the silver would not get oxidized. In the 18th century, the process was carried on using a kind of reverbe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Petroleum
Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring unprocessed crude oil, as well as to petroleum products that consist of refining, refined crude oil. Petroleum is a fossil fuel formed over millions of years from anaerobic decay of organic materials from buried prehistoric life, prehistoric organisms, particularly planktons and algae, and 70% of the world's oil deposits were formed during the Mesozoic. Conventional reserves of petroleum are primarily recovered by oil drilling, drilling, which is done after a study of the relevant structural geology, sedimentary basin analysis, analysis of the sedimentary basin, and reservoir characterization, characterization of the petroleum reservoir. There are also unconventional (oil & gas) reservoir, unconventional reserves such as oil sands and oil sh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecular formula , which is often abbreviated as Glc. It is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. It is mainly made by plants and most algae d ..., fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double sugars, are molecules made of two bonded monosaccharides; common examples are sucrose (glucose + fructose), lactose (glucose + galactose), and maltose (two molecules of glucose). White sugar is almost pure sucrose. In the body, compound sugars are hydrolysed into simple sugars. Longer chains of monosaccharides (>2) are not regarded as sugars and are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Starch is a glucose polymer found in plants, the most abundant source of energy in human foo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fractional Distillation
Fractional distillation is the separation of a mixture into its component parts, or fractions. Chemical compounds are separated by heating them to a temperature at which one or more fractions of the mixture will vaporize. It uses distillation to fractionate. Generally the component parts have boiling points that differ by less than 25 °C (45 °F) from each other under a pressure of one atmosphere. If the difference in boiling points is greater than 25 °C, a simple distillation is typically used. A crude oil distillation unit uses fractional distillation in the process of refining crude oil. History The fractional distillation of organic substances played an important role in the 9th-century works attributed to the Islamic alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan, as for example in the ('The Book of Seventy'), translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–1187) under the title . The Jabirian experiments with fractional distillation of animal and vegetable subs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vegetable Oil
Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, or fats from seeds. Olive oil, palm oil, and rice bran oil are examples of fats from other parts of plants. In common usage, vegetable ''oil'' may refer exclusively to vegetable fats which are liquid at room temperature. Vegetable oils are usually edible. History In antiquity Olive oil has been a part of human culture for millennia.Ruth Schuster (December 17, 2014). "8,000-year old olive oil found in Galilee, earliest known in world", ''Haaretz''. Retrieved December 17, 2014. Archaeological evidence shows that olives were turned into olive oil by 6000 BC and 4500 BC in present-day Israel. Pagnol, p. 19, says the 6th millennium in Jericho, but cites no source. In ancient Egypt, plant oils including cedar oil, cypress oil, and ol ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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William Gardner Pfann
William Gardner Pfann (October 27, 1917 – October 22, 1982) was an inventor and materials scientist with Bell Labs. Pfann is known for his development of zone melting which is essential to the semiconductor industry. As stated in an official history of Bell Labs, "Timely invention of zone refining by W.G.Pfann ... was a major contribution that helped bring the impurities in germanium and silicon under control." Early life Pfann was born in Brooklyn, New York City. Showing unusual facility with materials, in 1935, when he was only eighteen years of age, he started with the Chemical Research Department of Bell Labs. He had no college degree at that time, but attending night school at Cooper Union led to a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1940. Pfann was involved in William Shockley's efforts with Bell Labs to use semiconductors to make devices to replace vacuum tubes. The early efforts used germanium. They made high back-voltage germanium rectifiers in 1945. Pf ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid (sometimes considered a non-metal) and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic table: carbon is above it; and germanium, tin, lead, and flerovium are below it. It is relatively unreactive. Silicon is a significant element that is essential for several physiological and metabolic processes in plants. Silicon is widely regarded as the predominant semiconductor material due to its versatile applications in various electrical devices such as transistors, solar cells, integrated circuits, and others. These may be due to its significant band gap, expansive optical transmission range, extensive absorption spectrum, surface roughening, and effective anti-reflection coating. Because of its high chemical affinity for oxygen, it was not until 1823 that Jöns Jakob Berzelius was first able to p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Flour
Flour is a powder made by Mill (grinding), grinding raw grains, List of root vegetables, roots, beans, Nut (fruit), nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many cultures. Maize flour, Corn flour has been important in Mesoamerican cuisine since ancient times and remains a staple in the Americas. Rye flour is a constituent of bread in both Central Europe and Northern Europe. Cereal flour consists either of the endosperm, cereal germ, germ, and bran together (whole-grain flour) or of the endosperm alone (refined flour). ''Meal'' is either differentiable from flour as having slightly coarser particle size (degree of comminution) or is synonymous with flour; the word is used both ways. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC has cautioned not to eat raw flour doughs or batters. Raw flour can contain harmful bacteria such as ''E. coli'' and needs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Germanium
Germanium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid or a nonmetal in the carbon group that is chemically similar to silicon. Like silicon, germanium naturally Chemical reaction, reacts and forms complexes with oxygen in nature. Because it seldom appears in high concentration, germanium was found comparatively late in the Timeline of chemical element discoveries, discovery of the elements. Germanium ranks 50th Abundance of elements in Earth's crust, in abundance of the elements in the Earth's crust. In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev Mendeleev's predicted elements, predicted its existence and some of its Chemical property, properties from its position on his periodic table, and called the element ekasilicon. On February 6, 1886, Clemens Winkler at Freiberg University found the new element, along with silver and sulfur, in the mineral argyrodite. Winkle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |