An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of and is hydrophobe (does not mix with water) and lipophilicity (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surfactant. Most oils are unsaturated lipids that are liquid at room temperature.
The general definition of oil includes classes of chemical compounds that may be otherwise unrelated in structure, properties, and uses. Oils may be animal fats, vegetable oil, or petrochemical in origin, and may be volatile or non-volatile.
Etymology
First attested in English 1176, the word
oil comes from
Old French oile, from
Latin oleum,
which in turn comes from the
Greek language ἔλαιον (
elaion), "olive oil, oil"
[.] and that from ἐλαία (
elaia), "
olive tree", "olive fruit".
[.] The earliest attested forms of the word are the
Mycenaean Greek 𐀁𐀨𐀺,
e-ra-wo and 𐀁𐁉𐀺,
e-rai-wo, written in the
Linear B syllabic script.
[ ]
Types
Organic oils
Organic oils are produced in remarkable diversity by plants, animals, and other organisms through natural
metabolic processes.
Lipid is the scientific term for the
,
and similar chemicals often found in the oils produced by living things, while oil refers to an overall mixture of chemicals. Organic oils may also contain chemicals other than lipids, including
,
(class of compounds with oil-like properties that are solid at common temperatures) and
.
Lipids can be classified by the way that they are made by an organism, their chemical structure and their limited solubility in water compared to oils. They have a high carbon and hydrogen content and are considerably lacking in oxygen compared to other organic compounds and minerals; they tend to be relatively nonpolar molecules, but may include both polar and nonpolar regions as in the case of and steroids.[Alberts, Bruce; Johnson, Alexander; Lewis, Julian; Raff, Martin; Roberts, Keith; Walter, Peter. Molecular Biology of the Cell. New York: Garland Science, 2002, pp. 62, 118-119.]
Mineral oils
Crude oil, or
petroleum, and its refined components, collectively termed
petrochemicals, are crucial resources in the modern economy. Crude oil originates from ancient
fossilized , such as
zooplankton and
algae, which
geochemical processes convert into oil.
[
] The name "mineral oil" is a
misnomer, in that minerals are not the source of the oil—ancient plants and animals are. Mineral oil is organic. However, it is classified as "mineral oil" instead of as "organic oil" because its organic origin is remote (and was unknown at the time of its discovery), and because it is obtained in the vicinity of rocks, underground traps, and sands.
Mineral oil also refers to several specific distillates of crude oil.
Applications
Cooking
Several edible vegetable and animal oils, and also
, are used for various purposes in cooking and food preparation. In particular, many foods are fried in oil much hotter than boiling water. Oils are also used for flavoring and for modifying the texture of foods (e.g.
stir frying). Cooking oils are derived either from animal fat, as
butter,
lard and other types, or plant oils from
olive oil,
corn oil,
sunflower oil and many other species.
Cosmetics
Oils are applied to hair to give it a lustrous look, to prevent tangles and roughness and to stabilize the hair to promote growth. See
hair conditioner.
Religion
Oil has been used throughout history as a religious medium. It is often considered a spiritually purifying agent and is used for
anointing purposes. As a particular example, holy anointing oil has been an important ritual liquid for
Judaism and
Christianity.
Health
Oils have been consumed since ancient times. Oils hold lots of fats and medical properties. A good example is olive oil. Olive oil holds a lot of fats within it which is why it was also used in lighting in ancient Greece and Rome. So people would use it to bulk out food so they would have more energy to burn through the day. Olive oil was also used to clean the body in this time as it would trap the moisture in the skin while pulling the grime to the surface. It was used as an ancient form of unsophisticated soap. It was applied on the skin then scrubbed off with a wooden stick pulling off the excess grime and creating a layer where new grime could form but be easily washed off in the water as oil is hydrophobic.
Fish oils hold the omega-3 fatty acid. This fatty acid helps with inflammation and reduces fat in the bloodstream.
Painting
Color
pigments are easily suspended in oil, making it suitable as a supporting medium for
Oil paint. The oldest known extant oil paintings date from 650 AD.
[ "Oldest Oil Paintings Found in Afghanistan", Rosella Lorenzi, Discovery News. February 19, 2008. ]
Heat transfer
Oils are used as coolants in
oil cooling, for instance in electric transformers. Heat transfer oils are used both as
(see
oil cooling), for heating (e.g. in
) and in other applications of heat transfer.
Lubrication
Given that they are non-polar, oils do not easily adhere to other substances. This makes them useful as
lubricants for various engineering purposes. Mineral oils are more commonly used as machine lubricants than biological oils are.
Whale oil is preferred for lubricating clocks, because it does not evaporate, leaving dust, although its use was banned in the US in 1980.
It is a long-running myth that spermaceti from whales has still been used in NASA projects such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager program probe because of its extremely low freezing temperature. Spermaceti is not actually an oil, but a mixture mostly of wax esters, and there is no evidence that NASA has used whale oil.
Fuel
Some oils
Combustion in liquid or
aerosol form, generating
light, and
heat which can be used directly or converted into other forms of energy such as electricity or mechanical work. In order to obtain many fuel oils,
crude oil is pumped from the ground and is shipped via
oil tanker or a pipeline to an
oil refinery. There, it is converted from crude oil to
diesel fuel (petrodiesel),
ethane (and other short-chain
alkanes),
(heaviest of commercial fuels, used in ships/furnaces),
gasoline (petrol),
jet fuel,
kerosene,
benzene (historically), and liquefied petroleum gas. A barrel of crude oil produces approximately of diesel, of jet fuel, of gasoline, of other products, split between heavy fuel oil and liquified petroleum gases,
[ U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) — Retrieved 2011-10-02.] and of heating oil. The total production of a barrel of crude into various products results in an increase to .
[
]
In the 18th and 19th centuries, whale oil was commonly used for lamps, which was replaced with natural gas and then electricity.
Chemical feedstock
Crude oil can be refined into a wide variety of component hydrocarbons. Petrochemicals are the refined components of crude oil
Organic oils are another important chemical feedstock, especially in green chemistry.
See also
-
Emulsifier, a chemical which allows oil and water to mix
External links
