What Can Oil Be Used For

Viscous water-insoluble liquid

An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is both hydrophobic (does not mix with h2o, literally "h2o fearing") and lipophilic (mixes with other oils, literally "fatty loving"). Oils are unremarkably flammable and surface active. Virtually oils are unsaturated lipids that are liquid at room temperature.

The general definition of oil includes classes of chemical compounds that may exist otherwise unrelated in structure, properties, and uses. Oils may be animate being, vegetable, or petrochemical in origin, and may be volatile or non-volatile.^[1] They are used for food (due east.g., olive oil), fuel (e.g., heating oil), medical purposes (e.chiliad., mineral oil), lubrication (e.thou. motor oil), and the manufacture of many types of paints, plastics, and other materials. Specially prepared oils are used in some religious ceremonies and rituals every bit purifying agents.

Etymology

Showtime attested in English 1176, the word oil comes from Old French oile, from Latin oleum,^[2] which in plow comes from the Greek ἔλαιον (elaion), "olive oil, oil"^[3] and that from ἐλαία (elaia), "olive tree", "olive fruit".^[4] ^[five] The earliest attested forms of the word are the Mycenaean Greek 𐀁𐀨𐀺 , e-ra-wo and 𐀁𐁉𐀺 , e-rai-wo, written in the Linear B syllabic script.^[six]

Types

Organic oils

Organic oils are produced in remarkable diverseness past plants, animals, and other organisms through natural metabolic processes. Lipid is the scientific term for the fatty acids, steroids and like chemicals often found in the oils produced by living things, while oil refers to an overall mixture of chemicals. Organic oils may also contain chemicals other than lipids, including proteins, waxes (class of compounds with oil-like properties that are solid at common temperatures) and alkaloids.

Lipids tin be classified past the way that they are made by an organism, their chemical structure and their limited solubility in water compared to oils. They have a high carbon and hydrogen content and are considerably defective in oxygen compared to other organic compounds and minerals; they tend to be relatively nonpolar molecules, simply may include both polar and nonpolar regions as in the instance of phospholipids and steroids.^[7]

Mineral oils

Rough oil, or petroleum, and its refined components, collectively termed petrochemicals, are crucial resources in the modern economy. Rough oil originates from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil.^[8] The name "mineral oil" is a misnomer, in that minerals are not the source of the oil—ancient plants and animals are. Mineral oil is organic. However, information technology is classified as "mineral oil" instead of every bit "organic oil" because its organic origin is remote (and was unknown at the time of its discovery), and considering information technology is obtained in the vicinity of rocks, underground traps, and sands. Mineral oil likewise refers to several specific distillates of crude oil.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Applications

Cooking

Several edible vegetable and animate being oils, and also fats, are used for various purposes in cooking and food preparation. In particular, many foods are fried in oil much hotter than boiling water. Oils are also used for flavoring and for modifying the texture of foods (east.grand. stir fry). Cooking oils are derived either from animal fat, as butter, lard and other types, or plant oils from olive, maize, sunflower and many other species.^[9]

Cosmetics

Oils are applied to pilus to give it a lustrous look, to foreclose tangles and roughness and to stabilize the hair to promote growth. See hair conditioner.^{[ citation needed ]}

Religion

Oil has been used throughout history as a religious medium. Information technology is often considered a spiritually purifying agent and is used for anointing purposes. As a particular example, holy anointing oil has been an important ritual liquid for Judaism^[x] and Christianity.^[xi]

Painting

Color pigments are easily suspended in oil, making it suitable equally a supporting medium for paints. The oldest known extant oil paintings date from 650 AD.^[12]

Estrus transfer

Oils are used as coolants in oil cooling, for instance in electric transformers. Heat transfer oils are used both every bit coolants (meet oil cooling), for heating (eastward.1000. in oil heaters) and in other applications of heat transfer.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Lubrication

Given that they are non-polar, oils do non easily attach to other substances. This makes them useful as lubricants for various engineering purposes. Mineral oils are more commonly used as automobile lubricants than biological oils are. Whale oil is preferred for lubricating clocks, because it does non evaporate, leaving dust, although its employ was banned in the USA in 1980.^[thirteen]

It is a long-running myth that spermaceti from whales has still been used in NASA projects such every bit the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager probe considering of its extremely low freezing temperature. Spermaceti is not actually an oil, but a mixture mostly of wax esters, and there is no prove that NASA has used whale oil.^[14]

Fuel

Some oils burn in liquid or aerosol form, generating light, and heat which can be used directly or converted into other forms of free energy such as electricity or mechanical work. In order to obtain many fuel oils, rough oil is pumped from the ground and is shipped via oil tanker or a pipeline to an oil refinery. In that location, it is converted from rough oil to diesel (petrodiesel), ethane (and other short-chain alkanes), fuel oils (heaviest of commercial fuels, used in ships/furnaces), gasoline (petrol), jet fuel, kerosene, benzene (historically), and liquefied petroleum gas. A 42-United states-gallon (35 imp gal; 160 L) barrel of rough oil produces approximately 10 U.s.a. gallons (8.3 imp gal; 38 L) of diesel, four The states gallons (3.three imp gal; 15 50) of jet fuel, 19 Us gallons (sixteen imp gal; 72 L) of gasoline, 7 U.s.a. gallons (five.8 imp gal; 26 L) of other products, 3 US gallons (2.5 imp gal; 11 L) split between heavy fuel oil and liquified petroleum gases,^[15] and ii US gallons (one.7 imp gal; vii.half dozen 50) of heating oil. The full production of a barrel of crude into various products results in an increase to 45 US gallons (37 imp gal; 170 L).^[fifteen]

In the 18th and 19th centuries, whale oil was commonly used for lamps, which was replaced with natural gas and so electricity.^[16]

Chemical feedstock

Crude oil tin be refined into a wide diversity of component hydrocarbons. Petrochemicals are the refined components of crude oil^[17] and the chemic products made from them. They are used as detergents, fertilizers, medicines, paints, plastics, synthetic fibers, and synthetic safe.

Organic oils are another important chemic feedstock, specially in green chemical science.

References

^ "oil". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford Academy Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
^ oleum. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary on Perseus Project.
^ ἔλαιον . Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
^ ἐλαία in Liddell and Scott.
^ Harper, Douglas. "oil". Online Etymology Dictionary.
^ "The Linear B discussion due east-ra-wo". Palaeolexicon. Word study tool of ancient languages. "east-ra3-wo". Archived from the original on 2016-03-21. Retrieved 2014-03-22 . Raymoure, Yard.A. "east-ra-wo". Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B. Deaditerranean. Archived from the original on 2016-03-20. Retrieved 2014-03-22 .
^ Alberts, Bruce; Johnson, Alexander; Lewis, Julian; Raff, Martin; Roberts, Keith; Walter, Peter. Molecular Biology of the Cell. New York: Garland Science, 2002, pp. 62, 118-119.
^ Kvenvolden, Keith A. (2006). "Organic geochemistry – A retrospective of its first seventy years". Organic Geochemistry. 37: 1. doi:10.1016/j.orggeochem.2005.09.001.
^ Brown, Jessica. "Which cooking oil is the healthiest?". www.bbc.com. BBC. Retrieved eighteen May 2021.
^ Chesnutt, Randall D. (January 2005). "Perceptions of Oil in Early on Judaism and the Meal Formula in Joseph and Aseneth". Periodical for the Written report of the Pseudepigrapha. fourteen (2): 113–132. doi:10.1177/0951820705051955. ISSN 0951-8207. S2CID 161240989.
^ Sahagun, Louis (2008-10-11). "Armenian priests journeying for jars of holy oil". Los Angeles Times.
^ "Oldest Oil Paintings Found in Afghanistan", Rosella Lorenzi, Discovery News. Feb. 19, 2008. Archived June 3, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
^ "Bavarian Clock Haus and Frankenmuth Clock Company". Frankenmuth Clock Visitor & Bavarian Clock Haus.
^ "Troubled waters: Who Would Believe NASA Used Whale Oil on Voyager and Hubble?". Knight Scientific discipline Journalism at MIT. Archived from the original on 2015-02-15. Retrieved 2015-02-xv .
^ ^a ^b U.S. Energy Data Administration (EIA) — Retrieved 2011-10-02.
^ "Whale Oil". petroleumhistory.org.
^ Kostianoy, Andrey Thou.; Lavrova, Olga Yu (2014-07-08). Oil Pollution in the Baltic Sea. Springer. ISBN9783642384769.

External links

Look up oil in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Media related to Oil at Wikimedia Commons

Wikiquote has quotations related to Oil .

Petroleum Online eastward-Learning resource from IHRDC