What are the ingredients of mineral oil

The main components of mineral oil are carbon and hydrogen, and its main components are olefins and alkanes, which are completely different from vegetable oils. Vegetable oils are mainly lipid compounds composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. There are many methods for refining mineral oil, and mineral oil is widely used in all walks of life. Its most important function is lubrication. Let us learn about this aspect below.

Chemical Structure:

This product is a mixture of refined liquid hydrocarbons obtained from petroleum, mainly a mixture of saturated cycloalkanes and chain alkanes. It is obtained by normal pressure and vacuum distillation of crude oil, solvent extraction and dewaxing, and hydrogenation refining.

Mineral oil ingredients

Liquid paraffin is a colorless, transparent, oily liquid that does not fluoresce when observed under sunlight. It is odorless and tasteless at room temperature, but has a slight petroleum odor after heating. Density specific gravity 0.86-0.905 (25 degrees) Insoluble in water, glycerin and cold ethanol. Soluble in benzene, ether, chloroform, carbon disulfide, and hot ethanol. It can be mixed with most fatty oils except castor oil, and can dissolve camphor, menthol and most natural or artificial musks.

Refining method

It is obtained by taking the light lubricating oil fraction at 250-400℃ from crude oil and going through processes such as acid and alkali refining, water washing, drying, white clay adsorption, and adding antioxidants. When using paraffin-based crude oil, dewaxing is also required. In order to lower the freezing point of insulating oil, an appropriate amount of pour point depressant can be added. By taking different fractions of crude oil and controlling the concentration, dosage, action time and other related processes of sulfuric acid during refining, transformer oil, capacitor oil, cable oil, switch oil, etc. with different uses can be obtained.

Solvent refining or solvent refining combined with hydrogenation refining can also be used instead of acid-base refining. Mineral oil should be refined to an appropriate depth. Insufficient refining cannot remove harmful impurities in the oil; while over-refining will remove too much natural antioxidants and aromatic hydrocarbon components contained in the oil, reducing its stability and breathability, which is particularly effective for cable oil and capacitor oil. In order to improve the arc extinguishing ability of switch oil, the aromatic hydrocarbon content in the oil should be reduced as much as possible.