May I ask what carbon number range light oil falls within?
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Light oil is carbon how many – carbon how many? Heavy oil is carbon several—carbon several? Fischer Tropsch wax is a methylene polymer, an alkane polymer synthesized from hydrocarbon-based syngas or natural gas, with the synthesis process relying on high-quality and inexpensive raw materials from coal chemistry, using iron- or cobalt-based catalysts. Does anyone know what the process of synthesizing Fischer Tropsch wax entails?
There is no absolute criterion for this classification. For petroleum products or coal-derived oil products, light oils generally refer to components such as gasoline/kerosene/diesel; their carbon chain length ranges from about carbon 4 to carbon 22, meaning they are oils that can be separated through distillation at normal pressure. Heavy oil generally refers to oils with a carbon chain length of 22 or more, featuring a low proportion of aliphatic hydrocarbons and a high proportion of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Regarding the F-T synthesis, it can be considered as a complex process in which carbon monoxide is hydrogenated to produce methylene and water, with methylene molecules then coupling together to form carbon chains; wax is simply a special type of polycarbon hydrocarbon. You can learn about the mechanism from some literature on one-carbon chemistry*.