Oil and gas chemistry

Petrochemistry is a branch of chemistry that studies the composition, structure, properties and chemical transformations of oil and natural gas components, as well as their processing. The first research in the field of petrochemistry began in the last quarter of the 19th century, and by that time 4-5 million tons of oil had been extracted from oil wells around the world. Isopropyl alcohol, obtained by synthesis from gases released during thermal cracking of oil, was the first product of the petrochemical industry on an industrial scale. The wider use of oil and gas raw materials in organic synthesis compared to coal in the 1950s and 1960s led to the separation of petrochemistry as an independent field from chemical and scientific research. The main problem of petrochemistry is the study of the processes of refining oil and natural gas components and the search for effective methods.