Introduction to Fossil Fuels

Introduction to Fossil Fuels

What do all of the below have in common?

Tennis shoes, electricity, gasoline, medicine, toys, ball point pen

They are all made from oil – the gooey black liquid that comes out of the ground.

If we did not have petroleum products, how would our day be different?

It's not a coincidence that civilization - science, education, and the arts - has advanced as energy usage has increased. Harnessing energy and putting it to work frees people from the time-consuming labor of making food, clothing, and shelter. Consider the energy that goes into preparing a bath. In five minutes, you can fill a tub with hot water. 150 years ago, you had to chop wood, light a fire, fetch water, heat the water, and pour it into a washtub. Before modern heating, plumbing, and food processing, most people had very little time for education or leisure activities.

What is Petroleum?

Petroleum is an oily, flammable liquid that may vary from almost colorless to black. It is found in the rocks deep in the earth. Petroleum is a hydrocarbon which means it is a combination of hydrogen and carbon molecules. Other hydrocarbons that form in the earth are natural gas and coal. These hydrocarbons have the ability to produce energy.

Natural gas usually has no odor and you can't see it. Before it is sent to the pipelines and storage tanks, it is mixed with a chemical called sulfur dioxide which gives a strong odor. The odor smells almost like rotten eggs. The odor makes it easy to smell if there is a leak.

Energy Safety Note! If you smell that rotten egg smell in your house, get out of the house quickly. Don't turn on any lights or other electrical devices. A spark from a light switch can ignite the gas very easily. Go to a neighbor's house and call 9-1-1 for emergency help.

Coal begins as peat, a mass of dead and decomposing plant matter. As time progresses, the peat becomes lignite, a brownish rock that contains recognizable plant matter and has a relatively low heating value. Lignite is the halfway point from peat to coal. The next phase is

sub-bituminous. A shade of dull black, showing very little plant matter, this type of coal has a less than ideal heating value. Bituminous coal is jet black, very dense, and brittle. This type of coal has high heating value.

Many chemicals can be made or refined from oil and gas. These are called petrochemicals. These chemicals are used to create many of the things that make our lives easier today, such as electricity. The oil product probably most familiar to us is gasoline.

What is Energy?

Energy is the ability to do work. (by changing the motion, physical composition or temperature of an object.) Work means moving, lifting, warming and lighting. It takes energy to make things move. Cars move on the energy in gasoline. Many toys run on the energy stored in batteries. Sail boats are pushed by the energy in the wind. At the end of the day you may feel too tired to move. This is because you need to eat to renew the energy in your body that you used up all day growing, thinking, and moving. Energy cannot be seen. We only see the effects of energy.

We will never run out of energy. The problem is in storing energy such as it is stored in fossil fuels.

Think of energy as the heat produced when you change a particular matter from one state of being to another. For instance, when you burn coal or gas you are generating heat in the process that provides the energy. The sun provides heat (energy) by radiation, and is absorbed by matter on earth, changing its state. When you change the state of this matter again, you release the heat and use the energy from it to accomplish things, such as making cars run, heating homes, creating steam for generators to create electricity, etc.

How Oil Formed in the Earth

Petroleum is called a fossil fuel because the energy comes from plants and animals that died long ago. The energy in plants and animals comes from the sun. The sun is the original source of all energy.

Long ago, oceans covered most of the Earth. They were filled with tiny sea plants and animals. As these plants and animals died, their remains sank to the bottom of the sea. (above left) The rivers and streams of the earth were emptying clay, silt and mud into the sea. If this mixed with plant and animal remains, it formed a layer of rock called shale.

As layers of sediments pressed down on the sediment layers underneath them, the heat and pressure transformed the tiny marine plant and animal remains into droplets of oil. If the rock was permeable, the oil filled the pores of the rock in which they were buried. An area of rock that contains oil is called reservoir rock. Another kind of reservoir rock is limestone which is formed from calcium rich skeletons of marine organisms.

Sometimes oil is trapped by salt domes which are formed when an area was once underwater. Faults form when geologic forces such as plate tectonics volcanoes and glaciers cause layers of rock to break and move up and down in opposite directions.

The oil and gas that were formed became trapped. As millions of years passed, oil and gas rose toward the surface of the earth, and continued to travel upward until they were stopped by a layer of impermeable rock.

Once in a while the oil or gas managed to seep all the way to the surface of the earth. Most of the time, however, oil remained trapped thousands of feet below the surface by layers of rock. This is why we have to get to oil or gas by drilling down through the layers of rock to reach the trapped oil. (above right)

The oil we use today was formed millions of years ago. We cannot make more in a short time. That is why we call oil nonrenewable.

Locating Oil and Natural Gas

When you want to find something, what senses do you use? (sight, hearing, touch, smell) Geologists use the same senses to find oil.

Long ago, there were places where oil had seeped out of the ground to the surface. People could see the oil and know that there was more under the ground. Today, geologists have

to look for other clues because the oil where it could be seen has been used.

Geologists can look at surface features such as rock formations and use geologic maps, airplanes and satellites to show where oil and natural gas seeps. Ships can do the same for the ocean floor.

Much more information can be gathered by looking beneath the surface of the Earth. Geologists know what kind of rock is likely to contain oil or natural gas. By making very loud sounds over the land, geologists can tell what kind of rock is below. (Sound passes at different speeds through different materials.) At the Museum, you will see a “thumper” or hydrophone which creates the sound. The illustration below shows how the sounds are made in the ocean to find oil in the earth under the water.

Geologists also use an instrument called a “sniffer” which can “smell” oil and gas seepages.

The petroleum company must get permission from the land owner who will get a profit if oil is found. Since oil formed mostly where there were sea plants and animals, more oil is found in the water than on land.

Drilling

Once geologists think they have found an area with oil or natural gas under the surface of the Earth, the only way to be sure is to drill an oil well.

In order to get the oil out of the ground, long pipes are forced into the ground using a system called an oil rig. A derrick is a tower that holds the drilling equipment. It allows new sections of drill pipe to be added as the drilling progresses.

At the end of the drill pipe is a drill bit that bores into the earth.

Once the pipe reaches the reservoir of oil, the rig is removed and a pump is placed on the well head.

Most oil is under the ocean. This is why we have off-shore oil rigs that can float like the one below.

From the wellhead, the oil or natural gas is taken to refineries through pipelines such as the one below.

Photo courtesy Phillips Petroleum Company

Refining

The problem with crude oil is that it contains hundreds of different types of hydrocarbons all mixed together. You have to separate the different types of hydrocarbons to have anything useful. Fortunately there is an easy way to separate things, and this is what oil refining is all about.

A refinery is a place where the crude oil is separated into different fuels and byproducts called hydrocarbons. This oil has to be delivered to the refinery by ship, barge, pipeline or train. Huge tanks near the refinery store the oil until it is ready to be processed. Then the oil is boiled in huge towers in order to separate it into gasoline and other hydrocarbons. Some of these hydrocarbons are made into plastics.

Transportation and distribution of chemicals

After the processing of oil, gasoline and other products are usually shipped across the country through pipelines. There are about 230,000 miles of pipeline across the U.S. Pipelines are the safest and cheapest way to move large amounts of petroleum across land. (Pump stations which are 20 – 100 miles apart along the underground pipelines keep the petroleum products moving at a speed of about 5 mph.) It takes 15 days to move a shipment of gasoline from Houston to New York City.

Texas and Alaska drill the most oil in the United States. The leading producers of petroleum in the World are Russia, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, China, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Nigeria, Kuwait, and Norway. The largest petroleum reserves are in the Middle East.

Products Created

There are many products made from hydrocarbons. The main ones are gasoline for cars and jet fuel for such things as airplanes. The rest of the hydrocarbons are used to make chemicals needed by other companies to make their products such as CDs, car parts, televisions, and just about everything you touch and use every day.

Below is a list of examples of other petrochemical products made from hydrocarbons:

ball-point pens and sunglasses, trash bags and nylon rope, crayons and toothbrushes, deodorant and nail polish and tennis shoes and lipstick, candles, paint, carpet, soap, perfumes, balloons, photographic film, insecticides, cassettes, telephones, and polyester.

One particular area that has its share of oil-produced products is the medical industry. What would life be without hearing aids, bandages, artificial limbs and heart valves, contact lenses and hundreds of medications derived from petroleum?

Some hydrocarbons go to power plants where electricity is made. Most electricity is produced by burning coal. The electricity goes to our homes and schools through power lines like the one below. Look for these as you ride in your car.

Alternative Sources of Energy

The fossil fuels we use today are being used up. They are non-renewable-they cannot be replaced.

There are many renewable forms of energy available to us. Some of them are listed below:

· Biomass Energy is energy made from plants

· Geothermal Energy from hot water or steam from below ground

· Hydro Power and Ocean Energy from moving water

· Nuclear Energy is the energy that is trapped inside each atom

· Solar Energy is energy from the sun. The sunlight falling on the United States in one day contains more than twice the energy we consume in an entire year

· Wind Energy is energy from wind

These renewable energy sources are more expensive than the fossil fuels we use today, but all of these energy sources are being researched for future use.

Conservation
Conservation means the careful management of natural resources. Since non-renewable energy sources are being used up, if we conserve them they will last longer. There are many ways we can conserve energy.

In your home, you can save energy by turning off appliances, TVs and radios that are not being used. You can turn off lights when no one is in the room.

Recycling
To make all of our newspapers, aluminum cans, plastic bottles and other goods takes lots of energy.

Recycling these items -- grinding them up and reusing the material again -- uses less energy than it takes to make them from brand new, raw material. So, we must all recycle as much as we can.

The Petrochemical Industry in the Houston Area

Texas produces and consumes more energy than any other state. Much of the oil and gas produced here never leaves the state.

In the Houston area, the economy has depended on the petroleum industry for a long time. Oil companies chose to locate refineries along the Houston Ship Channel where they we save from Gulf storms.

Corps Visual Digital Library, No. 4233-01
Houston Ship Channel

The petrochemical industry creates many jobs in the Houston area and all along the

Gulf of Mexico.