Ask A Scientist Chemistry Archive

name         Larry
status       other
grade        other
location     FL

Question -   Can the different "hydrocarbons" mainly found in crude
oil, be replicated from say synthetics?
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No doubt there are synthetic routes for all of the hydrocarbons found in
crude oil, although one would have to do some literature searching to find
the most efficient route for a particular hydrocarbon. The web site:
 
http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/FILES/faculties/science/1999/g.p.van.der.la 
an/titlecon.pdf
gives some information on one class of synthetic routes for hydrocarbon
synthesis. Other "issues" would be: How much of the product is desired? How
pure must the product  desired be?

Vince Calder
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Maybe sort of, but it sounds economically backwards,
making a low-value mix of random molecules
from an expensive final product
which has been deliberately refined to a chosen few molecules.
And the percentages of the various species will never be exactly the same.
What did you want to do with this regenerated crude, that can justify 
20$+/gal?

Synthetic what?  Automotive oils, I must presume.
Some synthetic oils are not based on pure hydrocarbons.
But perhaps some are.

Even if what you wanted to obtain was a single particular component of crude,
taking it from crude is a far easier way to get it,
than disintegrating and re-reforming synthetic oils.
For example, there are carbon-ring compounds like benzene and naphthalene 
in crude,
which are completely absent in most synthetic hydrocarbon oils.
Breaking single-bonded, hydrogen-saturated oil down
and re-structuring it to the extent needed to re-create these rings
would take a fairly large amount of processing.
If the synthetic oil was free, in large quantities,
yes you could get something out of it.

Jim Swenson
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