THERMAL CRACKING

The figure provided here illustrates a block diagram for a thermal cracking process known as “visbreaking.”

Simple distillation of crude oil is not sufficient to extract all of the valuable hydrocarbons. To do that, additional refinery processes are used to change the product mix by altering the molecular structure of the hydrocarbons.

One of the ways of accomplishing this change is through "cracking." The term “cracking” refers to a process that breaks or cracks the heavier, higher boiling-point petroleum fractions into smaller molecules. The cracked products include valuable substances such as gasoline, fuel oil, and gas oils.