Crude Oil - Uses, Shortages and Alternatives

Crude oil is fractionally distilled to be used as other useful fuels to make cosmetics and plastics and much more. This is done my fractional distillation which is where the crude oil is heated to make it evaporate it then cools down which causes it to condense and then it can be used as more useful fuels.

Crude oil is used to make allot of different things here are just a few:

Petrol - for fuelling cars/ motor vehicles etc. And to operate machinery.

Fertilisers/Pesticides-

Heating oil- Used to heat houses.

http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947327894

http://wanttoknowit.com/uses-of-crude-oil/

http://chemistry.tutorvista.com/biochemistry/industrial-chemicala-petrochemicals.html

Alternative Fuels

The main fuels that are used around the world are oil, petrol, gas and coal. An alternative fuel is a fuel that doesn’t use any of these fuels. A few examples of alternative fuels could be biodiesel, LPG, Natural gas and Fuel cell. Biodiesel is produced from the oil of crops such as waste oils from cooking and rapeseed.

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This fuel uses a major reduction of carbon emissions compared to other fuels. LPG is a blend of propane and butane which is produced from oil refining and methane gas fields. This does have slightly higher carbon emissions than diesel but it has 80% lower nitrous oxide emission. Natural Gas is mainly made from methane which is extracted from oil and gas fields. This has 80% less nitrous oxide emissions than diesel like LPG bust natural gas has a 5% reduction of Carbon emissions compared to carbon.

Fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity.

Nuclear energy is another form of an alternative fuel where water is heated into steam through a nuclear fission. This process is a very clean way of making electricity but its downfall id the danger of the high levels of radiation and also the chance that the reactor could explode. Although the cannabis plant has a bad name for its self it’s not all bad because if you take hemp out of a cannabis plant it can be used to make alternative materials such as nylon.

One of the alternatives that can be used for an alternative to petroleum based plastics is bio plastic which is made up of raw materials and renewable materials. The main materials used that produce the bio plastic are wheat, sugar, corn, beets, sugar and other plants and also vegetable oils. This was invented around the mid-1980s. Out of the energy that is used by producing a petroleum based product only 65% of it is used when making bio plastic products so when making these we would save 35% of the energy that is now wasted on making traditional petroleum products. So when we look at the annual plastic products used in just Europe which weights no less than 50 million tonnes we can now see the dramatic change of the less amount of energy we would use if we just made Bio plastic products and scrapped petroleum products.

http://www.uk-energy-saving.com/alternative_fuel.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Bioplastic---An-Alternative-To-Petroleum-based-Plastic/601346

When Will We Run Out Of Crude Oil

There are many opinions and view of when crude oil will actually run out ranging from not long from now to many years away and some saying that it will never run out. One opinion is that Crude oil will never run out because they believe that there is all the oil in the ground that we haven’t found yet or don’t have the technology to find it and also that there isn’t the money to do so. And also that as we start to run out of oil and the wells start to dry up and we start using the reserves, the price of petrol (etc.) will rise and rise and people will look for cheaper alternatives. E.G instead of using petrol for cars changes to hybrid cars and also downsize to a smaller car. Another opinion is that crude oil is estimated to run out in 42 years because technology tells us, how many years the reserves will last by using the estimated amount of oil there is in the reserves divided by the amount of barrels of oil we use in a year.

Resource

Reserves

Production

Lifetime

Oil

1258.0 billion barrels

29.946 billion barrels

42.0 years

Http://www.petrostrategies.org/Learning_Center/are_we_running_out_of_oil_and_gas.htm

http://economics.about.com/cs/macroeconomics/a/run_out_of_oil.htm

Data

I just can’t seem to be able to find a good table on the amount of crude oil used I will come see you tomorrow Lovely.

My Opinion/Conclution

I think that one day crude oil will run out but it won’t be for a very long time because I agree with the theory that when we start to run out of crude oil the price of it will shoot through the roof and become too expensive for many people so people will find alternatives like bio diesel instead of using diesel but I do believe that when this happens some people will still use it and then eventually but very slowly It will run out.

And I also disagree with people that say it will run out in around 40 years because some people that say this only based on how much of the oil we have in are reserves, when I believe there is all the oil that we haven’t found yet and that as technology advances we will find much more so I don’t agree with statements that use that theory of just using how much we have left in the reserves. Also that using alternatives to crude oil is the best thing to do because most of the time the alternatives are much better for the environment and that it will prevent crude oil from running out for even longer.