JHZR2
Staff member
Hi,
OK, the dumb topic name to get readers... I know that regular mineral oils come from the distillation of crude oils, and so on.
My curiosity is regarding oil production and the varieties of crude that they are coming from. Are motor oils essentially the heavy bottoms from the distillations that produce gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuels?
Oils like the shell xhvi base are hydroisomerized slack waxes, the 'wax' portion saying to me that the precursor to the motor oil is more like a #5 or 6 diesel fuel that is semi solid at normal temperatures, and must be heated before combustion.
I ask this becasue I want to determine if most of the bases of common mineral motor oils are byproducts of the crude that is used to make the fuels to operate our IC engines (the optimal way), or if they come from other specialty or heavier crudes that must be drilled for and pumped out in and of themselves (worse way becasue it causes us to take even more fossil fuel products, and creates even more byproducts then if we were using a byproduct itself to make the oil, as in the first case).
Thanks very much for the info,
JMH
[ March 14, 2003, 10:35 PM: Message edited by: JHZR2 ]