What’s the difference between, Oil, Crude Oil, Gas, Natural Gas and Fuel? (And others I may be missing.)

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What’s the difference between, Oil, Crude Oil, Gas, Natural Gas and Fuel? (And others I may be missing.)

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Many of these terms are used interchangeably and confusingly. For sake of brevity, I’ll assume we’re talking about oil and gas refining and products.
In that case, everything listed above is a form of hydrocarbon.

Crude as it comes from the source will include hydrocarbon liquids, hydrocarbon gases, water, silica or sand and miscellaneous contaminants, which may or may not include sulfur compounds, hydrogen, and others.

Natural gases generally refer to hydrocarbon gases.

Gas can refer to gaseous hydrocarbons (or anything gaseous, really), or gasoline.

Fuel is anything that is intended to be consumed in order to produce power.

Hydrocarbons are exactly what they sound like… molecules consisting of carbon and hydrogen.

The simplest hydrocarbon molecules are strings of carbon atoms surrounded by hydrogen atoms. On paper, they always look like caterpillars. Methane is one carbon surrounded by 4 hydrogen. Ethane is two carbon atoms attached to each other, and while each carbon would love 4 hydrogen, because the two carbon are attached, they only have room for 3 hydrogen each. Propane is 3 carbons in a row, and the two on the ends have 3 hydrogen and the one in the middle has 2. All the other -anes just keep adding more carbons with two hydrogens.

Natural gas generally means about the first 6 because these are light enough on earth to be a gas.

With enough pressure and or chilling, however, these can be turned into liquified natural gas. It’s easier to transport lots of liquified gas.

Using natural gas as fuel results in fewer things to go wrong in the burning process, but not a lot of energy. It’s generally dubbed “cleaner” because it’s relatively easier to convert the fuel and air to water and carbon dioxide with less carbon monoxide and soot (i.e. carbon globs) and NOx. NOx is where the nitrogen and oxygen in the air get broken down and bond to each other… literally turning the air itself into something bad for you.

Natural gas is very flammable, very explosive.

Jet fuel is the lightest of the liquid hydrocarbons. A smidge lighter than gasoline. It has less energy, but desirable properties to keep planes in the air. Also flammable and explosive.

Gasoline is the same hydrocarbons but is a range of some 7 carbons to some 12 carbons long. The octane rating tells you what percent should be c8. Also flammable and explosive.

Diesel? Same deal, but heavier. Except not as flammable, but still explosive. It’s difficult to burn diesel, and requires the additional step of pressurization inside a diesel engine in order to combust it. Doesel naturally has more energy, and therefore results in higher mpgs when controlling other variables. It’s also harder to evaporate. This makes it popular for commercial purposes.

So what’s crude? Essentially all the above, plus unwanteds. Carbon has a tendency to like to stick to itself – see coal and diamonds. So a lot of what comes out aren’t necessarily strings of carbon, but sheets or 3d globs or rings of carbon surrounded by hydrogen. Graphene, as you might have heard, is a sheet of pure carbon. Benzene, as you might have heard, is 6 carbons in a circle surrounded by hydrogen.

All these things need to be filtered out and dealt with and reconfigured in the refining process.

Edit to add:

Oil can refer to two things. Crude or lubricant. Oil will include very dense, but “clean” hydrocarbon chains that are resistant to combustion. However, over time they do accumulate soot from the engine and needs to be changed before the soot starts grinding up your engine parts.

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