Sources and Industrial Uses of Alkanes

Alkanes and alkane compounds are widely used in chemical industries, specially for energy generations. In those uses, single alkane compounds (methane) or a mixture of alkane compounds (gasoline, diesel) are used according to the purpose. Main source of alkane compounds are crude oil refining. In this tutorial, we will see how alkanes are derived from natural sources and how alkanes are used in industries.

Content - Sources and Uses of Alkanes

Sources of alkanes
Uses of alkanes in energy requirements and power generation
- Methane, Natural gas
- Ethane
- Propane and Butane
- Gasoline: Heptane and Octane
- Diesel
- Fuel oil
- Coal
Uses of alkanes chemical industries and laboratories to synthesis and manage other chemicals
- Pentane and Hexane
- Lubricants
- Tar
- Paraffin wax

Sources of alkanes

Main source of alkane compounds are crude oil refining and coal industry. In crude oil, there are thousands of organic compounds including alkanes. In crude oil refining process, useful petroleum products are produced and those products contains again hundred of organic compounds. Among those compounds mixtures, there are considerable amount of alkane compounds.

Uses of alkanes in energy requirements

Among the mixture of chemicals in petroleum fuels, there are alkane compounds. In here, we will see how alkane compounds are included in petroleum fuels for each alkane compound.

Uses of Methane, Natural gas

Natural gas is a natural resource found in the underground of the earth where coal or crude oil resources exist. Natural gas contains methane gas as the main constitute and used for power generation. As well as found alone, Natural gas is found in the top layer crude oil wells. Addition to the methane, there are Hydrogen sulfide and other dangerous gases in the natural gas mixture.

Propane and Butane

Liquefied Propane and Butane mixture is used as the fuels in LPG cylinders which are used for cooking at household level, restaurants and etc.

Use of Gasoline: Heptane and Octane

Gasoline (Petrol) contains hundreds of organic compounds and following alkanes (parrafins) ranging from 4-12 carbon atoms are included too.

n-butane: 4 carbon atoms
N-pentane: 5 carbon atoms
N-hexane: 6 carbon atoms
N-heptane: 7 carbon atoms
2-methylbutane: 5 carbon atoms
2,2-dimethylpropane: 7 carbon atoms
2,2-dimethylbutane: 6 carbon atoms
2,2-dimethylpentene: 7 carbon atoms
2,2,3-trimethylbutane: 7 carbon atoms
2,2,4-trimethylpentane (isooctane): 8 carbon atoms

Uses of alkanes chemical industries and laboratories to synthesis and manage other chemicals

Alkanes which are not used for energy generation are still valuable chemicals to synthesis more chemicals or manage other chemicals.

Pentane and Hexane

Both Pentane and Hexane are used as solvents in laboratories.

Paraffin wax (Petroleum wax)

Paraffin wax contains a lot of alkane compounds varying from 18-30 numbers of carbon atoms. Paraffin wax is used for lubrication, electrical insulation, and candles. Value addition processes have been introduced to produce more useful products from Paraffin wax.

Bitumen

Bitumen is mainly used to construct roads. There are some alkane compounds in bitumen too.

Questions

What are the industrial uses of alkanes?

Propane and Butane are the most widely used fuels as LPG to provide heat to boilers and furnaces. Specially, in petroleium refining factories use this LPG gas to generate heat to provide steam for distillation, heat exchangers, pumps and other utilities.
Most of the organic solvents used are alkanes such as hexane because alkanes are very much non-polar compounds. Therefore, alkanes can be used to separate non-polar liquids from liquid mixture.