Petroleum and its Uses

We will discuss here about petroleum and its uses. In modern world the most important source of fuel is petroleum.

Millions of years back a vast natural disaster occurred on the Earth, when large land masses went under the oceanic floor. Numerous aquatic animals and plants, which lived in the sea also got buried in that process. Large quantity of sediments deposited over it day after day for several thousand years In course of time the buried deposits were modified into sedimentary rock. Under the huge pressure of this rock the buried marine organic matters were gradually transformed into a blackish brown, thick and sticky matter, called petroleum.

The different uses of petroleum are discussed here. We can extract crude petroleum by drilling through the layers of rocks, which is further refined in oil refineries. In this process we get, petrol, diesel, kerosene etc. All these materials are used as fuels.

During the refining of crude petroleum several other materials come out as by-product. One of those is naphtha; polythene, polyester, terylene and many types of plastic materials are produced from it. Considering great importance of petroleum we call it liquid gold.

Fifth Grade

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