Petroleum Industry Terminology

noun a liquid fossil fuel

• The price of crude oil has been fluctuating due to global demand and supply factors.
• I heard that the cost of crude oil is going up again.
• They struck it rich when they hit a gusher of crude oil on their land.
• His emotions were like crude oil, bubbling up to the surface uncontrollably.

verb to separate or divide into smaller parts or components

• The chemist used a specialized technique to fractionate the mixture into its individual components.
• I heard you can fractionate that solution to separate the different substances.
• Yo, let's fractionate this mess and sort out what's what.
• Sometimes it's necessary to fractionate our thoughts in order to make sense of them.

noun a type of hydrocarbon compound that consists entirely of single-bonded carbon and hydrogen atoms

• The alkane series is a group of hydrocarbons with single bonds between carbon atoms.
• Alkanes are simple molecules made up of only carbon and hydrogen atoms.
• I prefer working with alkanes because they're easy to understand.
• In the chemistry world, alkanes are like the building blocks for more complex compounds.