Use the following to answer questions 1-3:
Crude oil is the name for the raw, thick, black oil mined directly from the Earth’s surface. Crude oil is refined into gasoline and other useful hydrocarbon compounds, such as jet fuel or propane. This refining is carried out in three main steps, using both the chemical and physical properties of the substances present in the crude oil mixture to separate the mixture’s different parts.
The mixture is initially separated by carefully heating it through a process called distillation, which recaptures vaporized liquids through condensation after they have reached their different boiling points. Since only one liquid component of the mixture boils at a time in each part of the refinery’s distillation tower, the different liquid components of the crude oil can be separated by boiling and condensing without changing their chemical identity.
The leftover chunks of gooey solid at the bottom of the distillation tower that never boil, called bitumen, are periodically filtered out too and used as a major component in producing asphalt for roads. One gaseous byproduct of the refining process is hydrogen sulfide gas. If released directly to the atmosphere, this gas dissolves in water vapor present in the air, producing hydrosulfuric acid, which is one major source of acid rain. To prevent some of this type of pollution, the gas is reacted with oxygen to transform the H2S into H2O and S. This sulfur is then sold to fertilizer producers in the agriculture industry.
Although steps are taken to minimize the pollution produced from the refining of crude oil, no significantly effective treatments have been discovered to prevent the slower, but extremely dangerous effects of releasing more and more carbon into the atmosphere by burning the fuels derived from crude oil and other fossil fuels. The continued use of fossil fuels directly impacts the planet’s global weather patterns and thus represents a serious threat to human and nonhuman ecosystems alike.