Me wrote:

In article ,
Rosalie B. wrote:

Synthetic oil is not necessarily produced in a refinery - more like a
chemical plant.

It would be nice if all you folks, would define for the rest of us, the
difference between a "Refinery" and a "Chemical Plant". This seems to
be the crux of the problem in this thread, definitions. Cripes, any
fool can gripe about this or that, but lets get the definitions straight
first so we all are talking from the same language.....

Since we are talking about oil, we are talking about an oil refinery.
Basically a refinery makes something more pure (refines it). Refining
can be done with other substances like sugar for instance.

But here we mean an oil refinery which is a plant used to separate the
various components present in crude oil and convert them into usable
products. Crude oil is separated into fractions by fractional
distillation. The heaver fractions, that emerge from the bottom of the
fractionating column are often broken up (cracked) to make more useful
products.

Oil refineries can become very large and sprawling complexes with vast numbers of pipes running all throughout the facility. The refining process causes many different chemicals to be released into the atmosphere, so a (sometimes very intense) odor accompanies the presence of a refinery.

A chemical plant is any plant that does anything with chemicals -
extract, refine, condense, synthesize, decompose, combust, neutralize
etc. The OSHA definition in the flammable liquid standard is

"Chemical plant shall mean a large integrated plant or that portion of
such a plant other than a refinery or distillery where flammable or
combustible liquids are produced by chemical reactions or used in
chemical reactions."

Technically an oil refinery is a type of chemical plant (because
petroleum is a chemical), but a chemical plant is not always a
refinery.

The OSHA definition of a refinery is:

"... a plant in which flammable or combustible liquids are produced on
a commercial scale from crude petroleum, natural gasoline, or other
hydrocarbon sources."

Since these definitions are in the flammable liquid standard
(29CRF1910.106) they apply to the plants that produce flammable (or
combustible) liquids, and of course petroleum products are usually
either flammable or combustible. But an ordinary chemical plant
wouldn't have to produce a flammable liquid and not all flammable
liquids are petroleum based (for instance alcohols are not petroleum
based)..

Synthetic oils are produced either by a chemical reaction (synthesis),
severe refining or other complex chemical processes. Oil can be
produced by coal liquefaction or other processes.

HTH

grandma Rosalie