In this weekends reading, I mainly learned about petroleum. Petroleum is an extremely important chemical resource and is found underground and is called crude oil when it's underground. Petroleum cannot be used in it's natural state (crude oil). In order to make oil usable it must be refined. To get oil to be refined it is taken to oil refineries where it will be divided into a simpler mixture. If the oil needs even more refining hydrocarbons are added to mixture which contain hydrogen and carbon. Petroleum is used as a variety of different things. 89 % of petroleum is used as fuel/gasoline for cars, 7 % is used for producing new substances like plastics and medications, and only 4% is used as lubricants and road paving materials. I also learned about fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the products of geological heat and pressure acting on biomolecules of prehistoric plants and animals. The energy released from burning these fuels represents energy originally captured from sunlight by prehistoric green plants during photosynthesis. Fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal) are thought of as forms of buried sunshine. Fossil fuels originated from living matter in ancient seas some 500 million years ago and when died they became covered with sediments with pressure and heat, and microbes which converted what was then living matter into petroleum. The fossil fuels then became trapped in porous rocks. Because this process takes millions of years, petroleum is considered a nonrenewable resource.
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