Petroleum-based Components Used in Products You Never Realized

Of course, everyone realizes petroleum products are used in the gasoline we fuel our vehicles and in the heating oil we use to keep our homes warm. But did you know petroleum-based components are in medicines, food, plastics, and even in the clothes we wear? Not only is petroleum a source for fuel, but it has many other uses.

Petrolatum or better known as petroleum jelly is sometimes blended with paraffin wax and used in medicines and in many toiletries and healing moisturizers. Paints, lacquers, and printing inks all have within them petroleum-based solvents to make them flow better. Besides your automobile engine, all machinery, like the engine in your lawn mower, need lubricating oils and grease made from petroleum to keep them running smoothly. Petroleum (or paraffin) wax is used in packaging, candles, matches, shoe polish, and even candy making. Asphalt we use
to pave our driveways, roads and airfields is a byproduct of petroleum. Asphalt also is used to surface canals, dams, and reservoirs. We can find this in the linoleum we cover our floors with and in the shingles we put on our roofs.

Petroleum coke is used as a raw material for many carbon and graphite products. These products include furnace electrodes and liners and the anodes used in the production of aluminum. Aluminum is used in the construction of just about all of our everyday appliances.

Since the 1920's, petroleum has been used as a feedstock in the production of petrochemicals. A liquid obtained from the refining of crude oil called naphtha is one of the basic feedstocks, Petrochemical feedstocks also include products recovered from natural gas, and refinery gases (ethane, propane, and butane). Petrochemical feedstocks are converted to basic chemical building blocks and intermediates, such as ethylene, propylene, normal- and iso-butylenes, butadiene, and aromatics such as benzene, toluene, and xylene.

All these chemicals are in turn used to produce plastics found in our everyday objects, synthetic rubber used to make things more pliable and stretchy, synthetic fibers found our clothing to make them more comfortable, drugs to help us fight diseases, and detergents to make our cleaning process easier.

There are three major categories for petroleum-based products:
fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel,
non-fuel products such as solvents and lubricating oils, and
feedstocks such as naphtha. Petroleum-based products, especially motor gasoline, distillate (diesel) fuel, and jet fuel, provide virtually all of the energy consumed in the transportation sector. Transportation remains the greatest single use of petroleum. The industrial sector is the second largest petroleum consumption, and the residential/commercial including the electric utility sectors account for the remaining petroleum consumption. Because we depend on oil and petroleum–based products so greatly, companies like Triple Diamond Energy Corporation, concentrate their efforts in continuing to provide it and making it readily available.