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This lesson covers fractional distillation of crude oil as required by the Edexcel GCSE Combined Science specification (1SC0). You need to understand the process, explain how it separates crude oil into useful fractions, and describe the uses and properties of each fraction.
Crude oil straight from the ground is not very useful. It is a complex mixture of hundreds of different hydrocarbons. To make it useful, we separate it into groups of hydrocarbons with similar chain lengths and boiling points. These groups are called fractions.
The separation technique used is fractional distillation — it works because the different hydrocarbons have different boiling points.
Fractional distillation takes place in a fractionating column at an oil refinery.
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