How do they make gasoline?

Answer 1

Gasoline is primarily produced from crude oil.

Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons with different molecular weights, formulae, boiling points, contaminants and other physical constants. Gasoline is a hydrocarbon mixture with a much more limited range of these components which is formulated to burn in internal combustion engines.

The Process:

Incoming crude is cleaned up by removing water and solids.

Initially the gasoline sized molecules re removed from the crude oil by distillation. This is a small portion of the crude.

The molecules too small to be gasoline are recovered and reformed to make bigger molecules. This reformate is redistilled to recover more gasoline sized molecules. Lighter molecules are added to the crude light ends going to the reformer for another trip through.

Heavy molecules from the crude and heavy molecules from the reformer are set to a "Cracker" to be broken up into smaller molecules. This cracked oil is distilled. Gasoline sized molecules are recovered, light ends are reformed and heavy ends are re-cracked.

The collected gasolines is purified to remove sulphur and other contaminants, adjusted with other thypes of hydrocarbon molecules to produce a clean burning fuel. Additive packages are mixed in (anti-knock compounds, detergents, antioxidants etc.)