This blog post introduces the fascinating journey of how everyday items like shampoo, cosmetics, and detergent—products we use daily—originate from petroleum.
Shampoo, cosmetics, detergent. These are essential products in our lives, and these three items provide us with cleanliness. Shampoo that washes away the fatigue of the day, cosmetics that conceal skin imperfections and boost confidence, and detergent that keeps our clothes and homes clean. We take their existence for granted. Without these products, our daily lives would be vastly different. They make us clean and presentable. They whiten soiled clothes, conceal dark freckles with skin-tone coverage, and breathe life into our hair. In terms of color, they transform black into bright white.
But would you believe these products are actually made from black? They all originate from dark, oily crude. This fact might surprise you. Few realize that the origin of products making our lives convenient and beautiful is petroleum. Not many know that the origin of so many products we now take for granted is petroleum. Yet, without petroleum, our lives would be vastly different, and its existence in this world holds meaning beyond being a mere resource.
Oil is not merely a raw material for products; it is a crucial foundation supporting modern civilization. It is the fuel that powers cars, the energy that runs factories, and the driving force behind the global economy. When we recall that countless products we use daily originate from oil, we are reminded once again of its importance. Therefore, let’s carefully trace where and how this oil—the origin of so many products—is obtained, rather than assuming it just fell from the sky.
First, let’s examine the ancestry of oil. Oil traces its lineage back to crude oil as its father and oil wells as its grandfather; it is only obtained after two refining processes. So, let’s venture further afield to find oil wells and crude oil. Oil wells are formed when organic matter left behind by organisms that lived in past geological eras is subjected to over 500 atmospheres of pressure, geothermal heat between 50°C and 150°C, and time spanning over a million years. This process is the result of nature’s marvelous work, sustained over tens of millions of years, making petroleum a kind of ‘liquid gold’ created by the Earth. Thus, oil wells were formed deep underground where these conditions converged. Now, only one problem remains: how to extract this oil from deep underground? Simply put, it’s all about drilling a hole and sucking it up through pipes. However, since most oil wells lie beneath the ocean rather than on land, the challenges are immense.
But what is the true strength of us Koreans? The Miracle on the Han River, surpassing Germany’s Miracle on the Rhine! Our shipbuilding industry created something called a Drillship. This Drillship, typically 220-250m long and 35-45m wide, drills holes in the seabed, inserts pipes, and extracts crude oil. The drilling process itself is no easy feat. Now, go to a playground and try digging a hole in the sand! You can dig down to a certain depth, but as you keep digging, you’ll easily notice the sand on the sides collapsing. It’s the same on the seabed. Therefore, after drilling to a certain depth, support pipes are installed to prevent the hole from collapsing, and cement is poured into the space between the hole and the pipes. These operations are called Drilling, Casing, and Cementing, and they form a single set. Repeating these steps eventually leads to encountering the oil well we sought.
To regulate the flow from these wells, an X-mas Tree is installed, consisting of valves and chokes. It earned this name because its installed appearance resembles a Christmas tree. Only after this long and complex process can we finally extract oil from the well, the grandfather of petroleum. We are truly blessed to be able to use this product so cheaply. But don’t let your guard down! The well is still underwater, and the crude hasn’t been refined yet.
The weary, aged well, exhausted from its long journey, is about to give birth to its child, crude oil. Let’s examine this process. The oil from the subsea wells is transported via pipelines to the FPSO or production facilities. FPSO? Production facilities? These are the essential elements needed to transform this oil well into crude oil. Looking at the most representative FPSO, it stands for Floating Production Storage Offloading Unit. It floats on the sea, producing and storing crude oil before transferring it to tankers for transport. The well brought up through the drillship’s drilling process is separated in the FPSO’s separator, a process based on a simple principle. The well contains primarily gas, crude oil, and water. These form layers due to their density differences: the heaviest water settles at the bottom, followed by the crude oil, and the lightest gas forms the top layer. Therefore, a hole is made at the very bottom to separate the water, a hole at the very top to separate the gas, and a partition in the middle to separate the crude oil. Finally, our protagonist, the crude oil, stands alone, having completed its long, long journey.
Now standing alone, the crude oil embarks on a voyage aboard an oil tanker, taking a rest before entering a fractional distillation plant to give birth to its son, petroleum. At the fractional distillation plant, separation is achieved using differences in boiling points. Let’s briefly examine water and methanol. Water boils at 100°C, while methanol boils at 64.1°C. When a mixture of water and methanol is heated to 80°C, the water remains liquid as it hasn’t reached its boiling point yet, but the methanol boils and turns into a gas. This lighter gas rises to the top. It is precisely this principle that separates crude oil into petroleum, gasoline, kerosene, diesel, heavy oil, and asphalt.
After this process is complete, the petroleum extracted from crude oil becomes the raw material for various products that play vital roles in our daily lives. Petroleum is used as fuel itself, but it also serves as the basis for creating plastics, chemical products, and even medicines. The petrochemical industry provides the diverse materials used in products we use every day, such as electronics, clothing, automotive parts, and furniture. Only now, having completed all its tasks, does the crude oil disappear into the past, leaving behind its many children. These children of crude oil demonstrate their capabilities in diverse fields, and among them, petroleum is considered an indispensable entity.
Shampoo, cosmetics, detergent. These are products easily bought at stores, but we can now understand the complex and lengthy process required to obtain the petroleum needed to make them. Because they are so readily available, we might take them for granted. But when washing your hair in the morning, applying makeup, or doing laundry, take a moment to recall this long journey. For the petroleum still on its long journey somewhere right now!
