When you refine petroleum, where does the excess and waste go?

[Taverner]

And what exactly is the waste by product?

[leveymg]

1. Most of it gets spread on the nation's highways and biways. It's called asphalt.

The empire of oil is the "great circle of life."

[piedmont]

2. There is no waste that I know of. The non-refineable product is asphalt.

And it's in high demand.

[NoNothing]

3. Almost every refined product has a use

Whether it's kerosene, or diesel fuel, or gasoline, or tar, lube oil, or compressed gas, or petroleum jelly. Even the heaviest leftover sludge, asphalt, is useful. The only real waste is very light diffuse gas, which is flared off in the continuous flame you see at refineries.

However, they do use a lot of water and tend to give off a fair amount of air pollution, especially sulfur.

[sandnsea]

4. and kerosene, diesel, lpg, etc

http://www.eoearth.org/article/petroleum_refining

[NYC_SKP]

5. Pretty much all of it is put to use.

Figure 1 A schematic of the fractional distillation of crude oil used in petroleum refining. The mixture is separated into Gases, Gasoline, Kerosene, Fuel oil, Lubricating oil, and Residue(asphalt).



This is an image modified from a source image on Wikimedia Commons

Following is a short overview of the the different fractions from petroleum:

(Natural) Gases
The gas fraction contains hydrocarbons containing 1 to 4 carbon atoms in each molecule. These can be used for fuels. Another use is to derive materials such as plastics and synthetic fibers from such hydrocarbons, accomplished by polymerization techniques. An example is given below, propane:
Propane

Gasoline
Probably the most familiar of the hydrocarbon distillates is gasoline. Gasoline consists of hydrocarbons with 5 to 12 carbon atoms in each molecule. It is difficult to overstate the importance of gasoline to modern society, given the central role of automobile travel in our society. Gasoline also serves as an industrial solvent. An example of a hydrocarbon found in gasoline is toluene:
Toluene

Kerosene
Kerosene consists of hydrocarbons containing between 12 and 16 carbon atoms per molecule. The foremost uses of kerosene are as lamp oil, diesel fuel, and for catalytic cracking, a processes discussed in the section on unsaturated hydrocarbons. This allows these larger hydrocarbons to be broken down to a size that can be used for gasoline. An example of a hydrocarbon that would be in the kerosene fraction is tetradecane:
Tetradecane

Fuel Oil
Fuel Oils consist of hydrocarbons ranging between 15 and 18 carbon atoms per molecule. Like kerosene, this distillate is used for heating oil, for diesel fuel, and for catalytic cracking. An example is hexadecane:
hexadecane

Lubricating Oil
Lubricating oils consist of 16 to 20 carbon atoms per hydrocarbon molecule. Referred to sometimes as mineral oil, lubricating oils are used to decrease friction between moving parts. Perhaps the most familiar application is motor oil. An example of a hydrocarbon in the size range for lubricating oil is eicosane:
Eicosane

Residue(asphalt)
Hydrocarbons which are not boiled away remain after the distillation as hydrocarbons with more than 20 carbon atoms per molecule. These hydrocarbons can be used as asphalt. An example is tetracosane.

http://chemed.chem.wisc.edu/chempaths/GenChem-Textbook/Organic-Compounds-Hydrocarbons-581.html

[leveymg]

10. Let's not forget our more complex friend, "Plastics"

He's also a petrochemical product.



And his daughter, Pharma

[foxfeet]

6. Pop tarts. nt

[leveymg]

12. Bingo! Big Macs and animal feed

So much of the American diet is petroleum-based. . .



Mmmm! Potash and petrochemical animal feed. So tasty. Pass the ketchup, please!

[Regret My New Name]

13. +1 hehehe

(I laughed when I read that)

[lib2DaBone]

7. When they do the crack-spread from the raw oil..

I believe they get Butane, Propane, Diesel, Kerosene, Heating Oil, Jet-A and unleaded.. all depending on the time of the year and the refining process.

[Arctic Dave]

8. All of it is used. From asphalt to the residue sulphur.

And by residue, I mean mountains of it.

[Statistical]

9. Refining is more like seperating.

Oil is complex jumble of various hydrocarbons.

The purpose of refining is to separate them out.



Of course the large component of end use waste is CO2. Of which we put billions of tons into the "trash can in the sky".

You can't turn 1 barrel of oil into a barrel of gasoline. It doesn't work that. Way you can simply "seperate" a barrel of oil (42 gallons) in x gallons of gasoline, y gallons of diesel, z gallons of heating oil.

By controlling the temperature in cracking stack they can overweight one product or another but there is a limit to how much gasoline for example you can get from single barrel of oil.

Since oil is expensive and it will break down into 10 or so different products we have found industrial uses for all the products.

[DURHAM D]

11. I don't know about refining but when it is pumped out of the ground -

the junk (salt water) is usually dumped back into the earth via a saltwater disposal well.