Angel's Petrochem Distillation Nerdy Question

[DiabloRojo]

Hello! I'm a Chemical Engineering Student and I've been playing around with this amazing mod for a while. It's incredible complex and a tough challenge, which I enjoy. Specially the petrochemical part, but there is something that I can't figure out. That is the residue of the crude oil distillation, that is the purple one. What is it supposed to be? Asphalt? High boiling point hydrocarbons? What is residual gas? I'm not asking for a change of the products or mechanics of the mod but for pure curiosity. Regards, Leo.

[Idobox]

I assume the residue of crude oil distillation is exactly that, everything that's left after the distillation, so tars, asphalt, partially coked hydrocarbons, that kind of stuff.

And I suppose the residual gas is the same, a mixture of various light hydrocarbons. In real life, this stuff is often burned as waste because it's quite hard to get any 'clean' gas out of it, with all the sulfur, diverse contaminents, toxic volatils...
Angel is being kind by letting us react it with hydrocarbons or steam cracking it and ignoring all the reasons real life refineries just put it into a flare stack.

[DiabloRojo]

I assume the residue of crude oil distillation is exactly that, everything that's left after the distillation, so tars, asphalt, partially coked hydrocarbons, that kind of stuff.

And I suppose the residual gas is the same, a mixture of various light hydrocarbons. In real life, this stuff is often burned as waste because it's quite hard to get any 'clean' gas out of it, with all the sulfur, diverse contaminents, toxic volatils...
Angel is being kind by letting us react it with hydrocarbons or steam cracking it and ignoring all the reasons real life refineries just put it into a flare stack.

But if the residue is all of that it could be further refined in a vacuum refinery for more products or the asphalt used for roads in-game. Maybe make it necessary to sort it out and separate its components.

Maybe residual gas is composed of heavy hydrocarbons? Because they are all that remain in the bottom of the distillation column. I'm asking out of pure curiosity, nothing else. The mod is excellent as it is. Regards.

[pezzawinkle]

As someone with a PhD in Chemical Engineering, I do understand the frustration with the simplifications presented in angels. Especially the SYNGAS stuff. However, as overly simple and low complexity as it seems to us, it it frustratingly difficult and complex to the vast majority of players. If however, you wish to contribute to one of my mods PCPRedux, with the extension ideas, id be happy to implement them.

[pezzawinkle]

That kind of missed the questions though.
Residual gas is a mixed mess typically found as a purge stream from reactive processes with internal recycling.

The heavy solid from oil distillation is analogous to the really heavy hydrocarbons ( bottom fraction), as suggested, like tar and other heavies. The cracking of these, is the later process of turning it to gas by steam cracking.