In this blog post, we will introduce the interesting journey of how household products such as shampoo, cosmetics, and detergents that we use every day came from petroleum.
Shampoo, cosmetics, and detergent. These are the products that we need in our lives, and these three products give us cleanliness. Shampoo that washes away the fatigue of the day, cosmetics that hide skin imperfections and give us confidence, and detergent that keeps our clothes and home clean. We take these products for granted. Our daily lives would be very different without them. They make us clean and better. They whiten clothes with black stains, cover black freckles with flesh color, and breathe life into hair. In this way, they give the impression of making black white and bright, like a color.
But would you believe that they are actually made of black? These products are all made from dark petroleum. You might be quite surprised to learn that the origin of the products that make our lives convenient and beautiful is petroleum. Not many people know that the origin of many products that we take for granted is petroleum. But without oil, our lives would be very different, and the existence of oil in this world is more than just a resource.
Oil is not just a raw material for products, but also an important foundation that supports modern civilization. It is the fuel that powers cars, the energy that runs factories, and the driving force behind the global economy. When we remember that many of the products we use every day come from oil, we realize how important it is. Therefore, let’s take a step-by-step look at where and how petroleum, the origin of many products, was obtained, rather than assuming that it fell from the sky.
First, let’s look at the origin of petroleum. Petroleum is made through two refining processes, with the father being crude oil and the grandfather being the well. So let’s go further in search of oil and crude oil. Oil is formed by the organic matter left by the creatures that lived in the geological era of the past, with a pressure of 500 atmospheres and a geothermal temperature of 50°C to 150°C, and after more than one million years. This process is the result of the natural wonders that have lasted for tens of millions of years, and oil can be said to be a kind of “liquid gold” created by the earth. That’s why the oil well was created deep underground, where these conditions are met. Now there is only one problem left. How do you get this oil well out of the deep underground? Simply put, drill a hole and suck it up with a pipe. But since most oil wells are not on the surface but in the ocean, there are many difficulties.
But what is the potential of Koreans? The Han River Miracle of Korea surpasses the miracle of the Rhine River in Germany! The shipbuilding industry in Korea has created something called a drillship. This drillship is usually 220250m long and 3545m wide. It drills holes in the seabed and inserts pipes to extract crude oil, but the drilling process is not easy. Now, let’s go to the playground and dig a hole in the sandpit! You can dig to a certain depth, but if you keep digging, you will easily notice that the sand on the side collapses. The same is true on the seabed. Therefore, when digging to a certain depth, a support pipe is inserted to prevent the hole from collapsing, and cement is added between the hole and the pipe. These tasks are called drilling, casing, and cementing, and they can be seen as a single set. By repeating these tasks, we finally meet the oil well we wanted to meet.
Now, we install an X-mas tree consisting of valves and chokes to control the flow of these oil wells. The name comes from the fact that the installed shape resembles a Christmas tree. It is only after going through such a long and complicated process that oil can finally be extracted from the oil well, so we are blessed to be able to use such products cheaply. But we must not let our guard down! The oil well is still on the seabed and has not yet been refined into crude oil.
Let’s take a look at the process of an aging oil well, which is exhausted from a long journey, trying to produce crude oil. Oil wells on the seabed are transported to FPSOs or production facilities through pipes. FPSO? Production facilities? These are the elements needed to turn this oil well into crude oil. The most representative FPSO is an acronym for Floating Production Storage Offloading Unit, which is a ship that floats on the sea to produce and store crude oil, and then delivers it to oil tankers. The oil wells that are brought up through the drilling process of the drillship are separated in the separator of the FPSO, and the process is done through a simple principle. There are mainly three types of substances in the oil wells: gas, oil, and water. These substances form layers according to their density, so the heaviest water is at the bottom, followed by oil, and the lightest gas is at the top. So, a hole is made at the bottom to separate the water, a hole is made at the top to separate the gas, and a partition is made in the middle to separate the crude oil. Finally, our main character, crude oil, has finished its long journey and stands alone.
Finally, crude oil, now standing alone, goes on a cruise on an oil tanker and takes a break, and then goes into a fractionation plant to give birth to a son named petroleum. In a fractionation plant, the difference in boiling points is used to separate the components. Let’s take a look at water and methanol. Water boils at 100°C and methanol boils at 64.1°C. When a mixture of water and methanol is heated to 80°C, water remains in a liquid state because it has not yet reached the boiling point, but methanol boils and turns into a gas, and the lighter gas rises to the top. Using this principle, crude oil is separated into petroleum, gasoline, kerosene, diesel, heavy oil, and asphalt.
After this process, the oil extracted from crude oil becomes the raw material for various products that play an important role in our daily lives. Oil is used as fuel itself, but it is also used to make plastics, chemical products, and even medicines. The petrochemical industry provides various materials used in the products we use every day, such as electronic devices, clothing, automotive parts, and furniture. After completing all of its tasks, the crude oil finally disappears into the past, leaving behind several children, but these children of the crude oil are showing their abilities in various fields, and among them, oil is considered to be indispensable.
Shampoo, cosmetics, detergents. These are products that can be easily purchased at stores, but we can now understand the complex and lengthy process of obtaining the oil needed to make them. We may take it for granted because it is so easy to access, but let’s take a moment to remember the long journey it takes to get there when we wash our hair in the morning, put on makeup, or wash our clothes. To the oil that is still on a long journey somewhere!
