Dr. William Leffler outlines the history of the petroleum industry, its milestones and accomplishments. Then Dr. Leffler provides an overview of how the oil gets from the oil patch to the refinery. He concludes by explaining the composition of crude oil and discussing the qualities and characteri...

Dr. William Leffler takes you into the refinery, and illustrates the process of separating the various components within crude oil using a process called distillation. He then explains how refiners further separate the components of crude through vacuum flashing.

Dr. William Leffler explains the chemical properties of various components within crude oil. He covers the basic properties of paraffins, olefins, naphthenes, and aromatics, and discusses how they are formed and their destination within the refinery.

Dr. William Leffler outlines what goes on in a refinery gas plant. He discusses the various paths and processes refiners use to separate and utilize the various gasses in the petroleum stream. Dr. Leffler gives a history of cat reformers, and explains how cat reformers are used to create higher o...

Dr. William Leffler outlines the cat cracking process and explains how it takes straight run heavy oils and cracks them into smaller, more valuable molecules. Dr. Leffler then outlines alkylation, and how the process takes various low value products and combines them to create a valuable blending...

Dr. William Leffler outlines the hydrocracking process and explains how this versatile unit in the refinery can easily produce various products like distillate and gasoline. Dr. Leffler then outlines isomerization, and explains how the isom plant converts normal paraffins to isoparaffins.

Dr. William Leffler outlines the various techniques used to deal with residue in the refinery, including the coker, the delayed coker, and the flexicoker.

Dr. William Leffler outlines the demands of the internal combustion engine, and how that, along with the governmental restrictions placed on refineries, has shaped the way refiners produce and blend gasoline.

Dr. William Leffler outlines distillate and residual fuels, such as kerosene, jet fuel, heating oil, and diesel fuels. He also discusses asphalt as a refinery product, and the various ways it is created.

Dr. William Leffler outlines ways the refiners utilize hydrogen to remove contaminants and unwanted molecules from the refinery. He then presents a quick overview of all the processes examined in this series, and illustrates how they all work together.