Kerosene

• 1. Introduction

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  Kerosene powers the jet engines that carry people across oceans, and as of July 2023 the world burns roughly 5,500,000 barrels of it every day. It is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid derived from petroleum, clear and low in viscosity, miscible with petroleum solvents but never with water. The same fuel that lifts aircraft also lights lamps in homes without electricity and feeds the flames of fire dancers. Its name comes from the Greek word for wax, and a Nova Scotia geologist registered it as a trademark in 1854. How did a substance with so many names, paraffin in one country and lamp oil in another, come to replace the oil drawn from whales? And why does the World Health Organization now urge governments to stop people from burning it at home?

• 2. A Fuel Of Many Names

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  Paraffin is what the British call it, along with people in Chile, East Africa, South Africa, and Norway. The word kerosene dominates in Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, and the United States. Across much of Asia and the Southeastern United States, the same liquid is simply lamp oil, while in Appalachia it goes by coal oil. The spelling kerosine also appears in scientific and industrial writing.

  Paraffin causes confusion because the word covers products that are not kerosene at all. Liquid paraffin, called mineral oil in the United States, is a more viscous and highly refined product used as a laxative. Paraffin wax is a waxy solid extracted from petroleum, neither liquid nor fuel.

  Gasoline is far more flammable and volatile than kerosene, and some jurisdictions force the two apart with color codes. In Pennsylvania, portable containers for kerosene at retail service stations must be colored blue, set against red for gasoline and yellow for diesel. In Britain, premium kerosene sold in 5- or 20-litre containers from hardware and garden stores is often dyed purple, while standard kerosene delivered in bulk by tanker is left undyed.

• 3. What Kerosene Is Made Of

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  Between 6 and 20 carbon atoms sit in each kerosene molecule, with most falling between 9 and 16. The liquid carries a density of 0.78 to 0.81 grams per cubic centimeter, and whatever its crude oil source, its major components stay consistent. Branched and straight-chain alkanes together with naphthenes normally account for at least 70 percent of volume. Aromatic hydrocarbons such as alkylbenzenes and alkylnaphthalenes do not usually exceed 25 percent, and olefins rarely pass 5 percent.

  The heat of combustion of kerosene resembles that of diesel fuel, with a lower heating value of 43.1 megajoules per kilogram and a higher heating value of 46.2. ASTM International recognizes two grades: 1-K, with less than 0.04 percent sulfur by weight, and 2-K, with 0.3 percent. Grade 1-K burns cleaner with fewer deposits and fewer toxins, making it the preferred grade for indoor heaters and stoves.

  Kerosene stays liquid at room temperature, around 25 degrees Celsius. Its flash point lies between 37 and 65 degrees Celsius, and its autoignition temperature is 220. Commercial aviation fuel is standardized to a freezing point of -47 degrees Celsius, while Grade 1-K freezes around -40.

• 4. Razi To The Whale Hunters

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  In the ninth century, the Persian scholar Razi, also known as Rhazes, wrote the first known account of distilling crude oil into kerosene. In his Kitab al-Asrar, or Book of Secrets, the physician and chemist described two methods for producing what he called naft abyad, meaning white naphtha, using an apparatus called an alembic. One method used clay as an absorbent, the other chemicals like ammonium chloride, repeating the distillation until the product was perfectly clear and safe to burn. During the Chinese Ming Dynasty, people extracted and purified petroleum into lamp fuel, having used petroleum for lighting and heating as early as 1500 BC.

  Coal oil was known to industrial chemists by the 1700s, but it burned with a smoky flame unfit for indoor light. Cities relied on piped-in coal gas, while the lucrative market for indoor lamps belonged to whale oil, specifically the brighter and cleaner oil from sperm whales.

  The American whaling fleet had grown steadily for 50 years, reaching its all-time peak of 199 ships in 1858. By 1860 the fleet had dropped to 167 ships. The Civil War cut into whaling, and only 105 whaling ships returned to sea in 1866, the first full year of peace. By 1876 just 39 American ships set out to hunt whales, their lamp oil market taken over by kerosene.

• 5. The Inventors And Their Patents

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  Abraham Pineo Gesner, a Canadian geologist, claimed that in 1846 he gave a public demonstration in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He heated coal in a retort and distilled a clear, thin fluid that made an excellent lamp fuel, coining the name kerosene as a contraction of keroselaion, meaning wax-oil. He remembered a naturally occurring asphaltum called albertite in New Brunswick, but the coal conglomerate blocked him and won a court case by arguing albertite was a form of coal. In 1854 Gesner moved to Newtown Creek on Long Island, secured backing from businessmen, and formed the North American Gas Light Company.

  Despite his clear priority of discovery, Gesner did not obtain his first kerosene patent until 1854, two years after James Young's United States patent. For several years, only the North American Gas Light Company and the Downer Company could legally call their lamp oil Kerosene in the United States.

  James Young, a Scottish chemist, experimented in 1848 with oil seeping in a coal mine. When the seep ran dry, he turned to the dry distillation of the resinous boghead coal, or torbanite, naming one liquid paraffine oil because it congealed like paraffin wax in the cold. He patented his process in 1850, built the first truly commercial oil-works in the world at Bathgate in 1851, and took a United States patent in 1852. Courts upheld these patents, forcing other producers to pay him royalties.

  Samuel Martin Kier began selling lamp oil to local miners in 1851 under the name Carbon Oil, distilled from crude oil by his own process. His salt wells had begun fouling with petroleum in the 1840s, and at first he dumped the oil into the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal as useless waste. Historians have dubbed Kier the Grandfather of the American Oil Industry.

• 6. When Petroleum Won

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  On the night of the 31st of July 1853, doctors at a hospital in Lviv needed to perform an emergency operation that was virtually impossible by candlelight. They sent a messenger for Ignacy Lukasiewicz, a Polish pharmacist who had been improving on Gesner's process using oil from a local petroleum seep. His new lamps burned so brightly and cleanly that the officials ordered several plus a large supply of fuel. Lukasiewicz quit the pharmacy, traveled to Vienna to register his technique, moved to the Gorlice region in 1854, and set up a refinery near Jaslo in 1859.

  Edwin Drake drilled the Drake Well in western Pennsylvania in 1859, and the discovery of petroleum there set off public excitement and a rush of investment drilling. Petroleum had already been found at Oil Springs, Ontario in 1858, and Lukasiewicz had been distilling lamp oil from seeps in southern Poland since 1852. The increased supply let refiners side-step the oil-from-coal patents of both Young and Gesner entirely, producing illuminating oil without paying royalties.

  The American illuminating oil industry switched completely to petroleum in the 1860s. Petroleum-based oil was sold widely as Kerosene, and the trade name soon lost its proprietary status to become the lowercase generic kerosene. Because Gesner's original product had also been called coal oil, generic petroleum kerosene was still called coal oil in some parts of the United States well into the 20th century.

  Electric lighting began displacing kerosene as an illuminant in the late 19th century, especially in cities. Even so, kerosene remained the predominant commercial end-use for refined petroleum in the United States until 1909, when motor fuels exceeded it.

• 7. Lamps, Stoves, And Soot

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  The 1873 edition of Elements of Chemistry warned that the vapor of kerosene mixed with air is as explosive as gunpowder, a claim likely tied to the practice of adulterating it with cheaper, more volatile naphtha. The danger was real: in 1880, nearly two of every five New York City fires were caused by defective kerosene lamps. In less-developed countries, kerosene remains an important source of energy for cooking and lighting, and it serves as a cooking fuel in portable stoves for backpackers.

  Chile and Japan rely on kerosene as a home heating fuel for portable and installed heaters, readily bought at filling stations or delivered to homes. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, where it is called heating oil, kerosene heats areas off the gas pipeline network and fuels range cookers such as the Rayburn, with additives like RangeKlene reducing soot. The Amish, who generally abstain from electricity, rely on kerosene for lighting at night.

  Citrus growers once used a smudge pot fueled by kerosene to spread thick smoke over a grove against freezing temperatures. Salamanders are kerosene space heaters that dry out building materials and warm workers on construction sites, and pot-bellied torches once marked highway construction zones at night. A notable exception to all this black smoke is the gas mantle, discovered in the early 19th century. Mounted above the wick, the mantle is a residue of mineral materials, mostly thorium dioxide, heated to incandescence to produce a whiter, brighter light.

  Nigeria depends on kerosene as the main cooking fuel, especially among the poor, where kerosene stoves have replaced wood-based appliances. The Indian government subsidizes the fuel, keeping the price to around 15 U.S. cents per liter as of February 2007, in part to discourage cutting forests for cooking fuel. Primus stoves, invented in 1892, prove reliable under adverse conditions, and pressurized kerosene stoves hold a decisive advantage over gas cartridge stoves at very low temperatures or high altitude.

• 8. From Tractors To Rockets

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  A petrol-paraffin engine would start on gasoline, then switch to kerosene once warmed up, a trick used for tractors and hit-and-miss engines in the early to mid-20th century. After the Second World War, European drivers modified cars to run on kerosene rather than heavily taxed imported gasoline, fitting a much thicker head gasket to lower the compression ratio and selling the kit under the trademark Econom. During the fuel crisis of the 1970s, Saab-Valmet developed the Saab 99 Petro under the codename Project Lapponia, led by Simo Vuorio, designed to run on kerosene, turpentine, or gasoline. Between 1980 and 1984, 3,756 Saab 99 Petros and 2,385 Talbot Horizons were made, helped by Finland taxing kerosene less heavily than gasoline.

  Yamaha, Suzuki, and Tohatsu build smaller-horsepower outboard motors that run on kerosene, dual-fuel engines that start on gasoline before transitioning once warm. These are used primarily on small fishing craft, and multiple-fuel Evinrude and Mercury Racing engines burn kerosene as well as jet fuel. Today kerosene mainly fuels jet engines, with the highly refined RP-1 burned alongside liquid oxygen as rocket fuel.

  In the initial phase of liftoff, the Saturn V launch vehicle was powered by liquid oxygen reacting with RP-1. Its five F-1 engines, each producing 6.4 meganewtons of sea-level thrust, burned together to generate roughly 162 gigawatts, or 217 million horsepower. The combustion of kerosene, approximated using dodecane, releases about 7,513 kilojoules per two molecules burned.

  JP-8, a kerosene-based fuel, serves the United States military and its NATO allies as a replacement for diesel in nearly all tactical ground vehicles, electrical generators, heaters, stoves, and tanks. The New York City Transit Authority began using a custom ultra-low sulfur kerosene to power its bus fleet in 2004. In 2008, the suppliers failed to tender for a contract renewal, leading to a negotiated deal at a significantly increased cost.

  Aliphatic kerosene carries a low aromatic hydrocarbon content, separated from aromatic compounds by solvent extraction with methanol, DMSO, or sulfolane. Aromatic kerosene, by contrast, holds a large concentration of aromatic hydrocarbons, as in Exxon's Solvesso 150. In copper extraction by LIX-84, kerosene serves as the diluent in mixer settlers, and it acts as a diluent in the PUREX extraction process, though dodecane and TPH are supplanting it. Mark Foreman at Chalmers has shown that aliphatic kerosene can be replaced in solvent extraction with HVO100, a second-generation biodiesel made by Neste.

  In X-ray crystallography, kerosene stores crystals by keeping air away, preventing the slow dehydration that dulls a hydrated crystal's color. It can keep air from re-dissolving in a boiled liquid, and it stores alkali metals such as potassium, sodium, and rubidium, though not lithium, which is less dense than kerosene and floats. The entertainment industry uses kerosene for fire breathing, fire juggling, poi, and fire dancing, since its low flame temperature in free air lowers the risk if a performer touches the flame.

  As an adhesive remover, kerosene lifts hard-to-remove mucilage left by stickers on glass, removes dripped candle wax, and cleans old lubricant from bicycle and motorcycle chains. Artists thin oil-based paint with it and even clean brushes, though it leaves the bristles greasy. In Australia, a temporary thin floating layer of kerosene above a water tank has been used for mosquito control until a defective tank is repaired.

  The World Health Organization recommends that governments and practitioners immediately stop promoting kerosene's household use. Its smoke carries high levels of harmful particulate matter, and household use is associated with higher risks of cancer, respiratory infections, asthma, tuberculosis, cataract, and adverse pregnancy outcomes. Ingestion is harmful, and a kerosene shampoo used as a folk remedy for head lice can even prove fatal if fumes are inhaled. The US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has set a recommended exposure limit of 100 milligrams per cubic meter over an 8-hour workday.