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Fractional distillation Fractional distillation is the breaking down of a mixture into its component parts. This is done by boiling the mixture and separating the products by their varying boiling points. Method stages The crude oil is heated in a furnace. A mixture of both liquid and vapour rise, and pass into a tower that is cooler at the top than the bottom. The vapours pass up this tower in which there are trays stacked at different levels, the trays contain bubble caps to trap the vapour. As the vapour rises it gets cooler, once sufficiently cool the vapour will condense into liquid and will therefore be collected in the tray below. The shorter chained hydrocarbons condense in the trays nearer to the top of the tower and vice versa. This occurs as they have lower boiling points, and are therefore liquids in lower temperatures. Products Method flaws Small collections/pockets of certain length hydrocarbons may get trapped in trays that don’t corresponded with there boiling point. Also some substances have overlapping boiling points (as shown in the table) and will therefore remain mixed. Pollutants are created, some pollutants may induce taxes or disposal expenses. There are lots of products that are less valuable that are produced. Industrial cracking Individual fractions all have different values, the general trend is that the longer the fractions are the less valuable they are. The naphtha fraction from the fractional distillation of crude oil is in huge demand, this makes it valuable as buyers will be competing for it. This fraction is desired for petrol and by the chemical industry. Industrial cracking is used to crack larger chains into more valuable shorter chains. An additional benefit of cracking is that some alkenes are produced, alkenes are more reactive than alkanes and therefore have some desirable uses. There are two sub-categories of industrial cracking. Thermal cracking and Catalytic cracking Thermal cracking This involves heating alkanes to a hi