Biomass has been in use since people first began burning wood to cook food and keep warm. Wood is still the largest biomass energy resource today. Other sources include food crops, grassy and woody plants, residues from agriculture or forestry, oil-rich algae, and the organic component of municipal and industrial wastes. Even the fumes from landfills (which contain methane, the main component in natural gas) can be used as a biomass energy source.
Petroleum refineries convert crude oil and other liquids into many petroleum products that people use every day. Most refineries focus on producing transportation fuels. On average, U.S. refineries produce, from a 42-gallon barrel of crude oil, about 19 to 20 gallons of motor gasoline; 11 to 13 gallons of distillate fuel most of which is sold as diesel fuel; and 3 to 4 gallons of jet fuel.
Lubricant is a substance which is used to control (more often to reduce) friction and wear of the surfaces in a contact of the bodies in relative motion . Depending on its nature, lubricants are also used to eliminate heat and wear debris, supply additives into the contact, transmit power, protect, seal. A lubricant can be in liquid (oil, water, etc.), solid (graphite, graphene, molybdenum disulfide), gaseous (air) or even semisolid (grease) forms. The liquid lubricants can be classified based on the base oil to synthetic/semi-synthetic, mineral or environmentally acceptable (biodegradable) oils. Most of the lubricants contain additives (5-30%) to improve their performance.
Fuel is a combustible substance that mostly consists of carbon which, on proper burning in the presence of air, releases a considerable amount of energy in the form of heat and light. Due to the immense amount of energy produced by the fuels is economically used for various domestic and industrial purposes. In this article, let’s learn everything about Fuel and its properties in detail.
Almost every lubricant used in plants today started off as just a base oil. The American Petroleum Institute (API) has categorized base oils into five categories (API 1509, Appendix E). The first three groups are refined from petroleum crude oil.
Group IV base oils are full synthetic (polyalphaolefin) oils. Group V is for all other base oils not included in Groups I through IV. Before all the additives are added to the mixture, lubricating oils begin as one or more of these five API groups.
