I get that there’s some sense of just letting it sit there and heating it up, but I don’t get it.
In: Chemistry
Crude oil is a mixture of all sorts of hydrocarbons organized in (among other things) chains. Longer chains are thicker, heavier fuels, whereas shorter chains are thinner and lighter fuels. You remove (through distillation, basically the same process as with alcohol but with *lots* of different chemicals being distilled out) different subsets of those hydrocarbon chains to get particular fuels.
Of note, though; kerosene, standard #2 diesel, and jet fuel are all pretty closely related to each other (to the degree that any diesel engine can absolutely run on jet fuel without any modifications, although it might throw a trouble code on your emissions system), and as a result the distillation process is largely the same. The big difference is in refining of the fuel after distillation.
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