Petroleum (Latin: petroleum), also known as crude oil, is a viscous, dark brown (sometimes a little green) liquid. There are oil reserves in parts of the upper crust. It is composed of a mixture of different hydrocarbons, the main component of which is alkanes, in addition to sulfur, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, vanadium and other elements in petroleum. Petroleum is mainly used as fuel oil and gasoline, which make up one of the most important primary energy sources in the world. Petroleum is also a raw material for many chemical industry products such as solutions, fertilizers, pesticides and plastics.

The first oil drillers were Chinese, and the earliest oil wells appeared in the 4th century or earlier. The Chinese use a drill bit fixed to one end of a bamboo pole to drill wells, which can reach depths of about a kilometer. They burned oil to evaporate the salt to make table salt. In the 10th century, they used pipes made of bamboo poles to connect oil and salt wells. Ancient Persian slate records seem to indicate the use of oil by the Persian upper class for medicine and lighting. The term "oil" was first coined in the Taiping Guangji compiled by the Northern Song Dynasty of China in 977 AD. The official name of oil is based on the outstanding scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095) of the Northern Song Dynasty of China in his book "Mengxi Bi Tan" based on the oil "born in the sand and gravel of the water, mixed with spring water, and came out of confusion". Before the word oil appeared, foreign countries called oil "black gold", "devil's sweat beads", "glowing water", etc., and in China it called "stone grease water", "fierce fire oil", "stone paint" and so on. The streets of Baghdad, newly built in the 8th century, are paved with asphalt obtained from natural open-pit oil mines in the vicinity of the area. The oil fields of Baku, Azerbaijan, in the 9th century were used to produce light oil. The oil fields of Baku were described by the 10th-century geographer Abu Hassan Ali Masodi and the 13th-century Marco Polo. They say the fields can produce hundreds of ships of oil per day.

As for "petroleum refining", the beginning of the age is even earlier, the Northern Wei Dynasty's "Water Jing Note", written about 512~518 AD, the book introduces the refining of lubricating oil from oil. The British scientist Joseph pointed out in a related paper: "In the tenth century AD, oil was already available in China and was used in large quantities. It can be seen that before this, the Chinese distilled and processed the oil." It shows that as early as the sixth century A.D., China germinated the petroleum refining process. Petroleum is a liquid mineral product with hydrocarbons as the main component. Crude oil is petroleum that is extracted from the ground, or natural oil. Artificial oil is a liquid hydrocarbon extracted from coal or oil shale. The main elements that make up crude oil are a brown, dark green or black liquid with carbon, hydrogen, sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen as the main components of hydrocarbon mixtures with different structures. The Republic of Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. The Chinese discovered and used oil at the earliest time in the world. When it began, according to the audit, it began more than 3,000 years ago at the latest.

The history of modern oil began in 1846, when Abraham Gisner, who lived in Atlantic Canada, invented a method of extracting kerosene from coal. In 1852, the Polish Ignacyukasiewicz invented a method of extracting kerosene from more readily available oil. The following year, the first modern oil mine was opened near Krosno in southern Poland. These inventions soon became widespread throughout the world. The world's first oil refinery was built in Baku in 1861. At that time, Baku produced 90% of the world's oil.

In the nineteenth century, the oil industry developed slowly, and the refined oil was mainly used as fuel for oil lamps. Even if the empire knew that there were oil fields such as Daqing, they had not yet been exploited due to exploitation technology, and the Russians began their own reforms after the Crimean War, but where did the money for the reforms come from? The answer is the oil fields of Baku. The empire has been a major buyer of Baku's oil fields, even if it is not needed now. But because the true value of oil has not yet been discovered, it is cheap, and in the face of a limited world market, more than 76% of the output of the Baku oil fields is transported to the major strategic repositories in the empire for storage.

Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons and is a viscous, dark brown liquid. The direct use of crude oil is very wasteful, so it is necessary to separate the components of the crude oil, usually using the method of rectification, that is, the temperature is precisely controlled so that the components at a specific boiling point are volatilized. Lin Hong knew the boiling point, and after he handed over the method to the Royal Academy of Sciences, a group of high-end talents tinkered with it themselves, and by 1878 it was possible to achieve atmospheric distillation and vacuum distillation of oil. With the support of the emperor in technical principles and funds, imperial scientists used tubular heating furnaces and distillation towers to process crude oil, and initially formed the prototype of modern crude oil continuous distillation devices, and the crude oil processing capacity is getting larger and larger, and it is expected that by 1880 the empire will have 10 sets of crude oil distillation units, which can process 200,000 tons of crude oil per year.

But the real problem in front of Lin Hong is that even if gasoline, diesel, etc. can be distilled from oil, what can really be useful in the empire now is just asphalt, and without an internal combustion engine, no amount of oil is useless.

The piston internal combustion engine originated from the Dutch physicist Huygens's research on the use of gunpowder explosions to obtain power, but it was unsuccessful because the gunpowder combustion was difficult to control. In 1794, the Englishman Trick proposed to obtain power from the combustion of fuel, and for the first time proposed the concept of mixing fuel with air. In 1833, the Englishman Wright proposed the design of directly using the combustion pressure to push the piston to work.

In fact, the internal combustion engine has long existed, and in 1860, Lenoir of France imitated the structure of the steam engine and designed and manufactured the first practical gas engine. It is an uncompressed, electrically ignited, lighting gas internal combustion engine. Lenoir was the first to adopt elastic piston rings in the internal combustion engine. The thermal efficiency of this gas machine is about 4%. Barnett of England once advocated the compression of combustible mixtures before ignition, and then wrote about the important role of compressing combustible mixtures, and pointed out that compression can greatly improve the efficiency of Lenoir's internal combustion engine. In 1862, after the French scientist Roscha made a theoretical analysis of the thermal process of the internal combustion engine, he put forward the requirement of improving the efficiency of the internal combustion engine, which was the earliest four-stroke work cycle.

The best internal combustion engine in the Reich today was made by the German inventor (as for why he came back to work in the Reich, not explained) Otto (Otto) successfully built the first reciprocating piston, single-cylinder, horizontal, 3.2 kW (4.4 hp) four-stroke internal combustion engine by applying the principle of Rocha, although this Otto 1 was still fueled by gas and used flame ignition, with a speed of 156.7 rpm, a compression ratio of 2.66, a thermal efficiency of 14%, and smooth operation. In terms of power and thermal efficiency, it is the highest available today.

Of course, Otto's colleagues, Daim and Diesel of the Royal Academy of Sciences, also put forward their own ideas and designs, but it was difficult to make real objects because the materials were not up to standard.

"This is what you call Volkswagen?" Lin Hong looked at the ugly monster in front of him, although he was already mentally prepared, he was still startled! This car in front of you, well! Call it a car, this car is less than three meters long and less than one meter wide, and unlike the early cars in history, the wheels are rubber tires (the same narrow), and the steering is not controlled by a straight lever like in history, here is a steering wheel.

"Your Majesty, this Volkswagen can be said to be exactly the same as you envisioned, although the power of 3.5 kilowatts (5 horsepower) is a little smaller, it is not a problem to make it run at all, unlike the steam car, his noise is very small, of course, this is only the initial product, it will definitely be better in the future." Xu Shou, president of the Royal Academy of Sciences, stood beside the emperor and introduced.

"We need to speed up R&D! I've heard that the public has a lot of opinions about those steam locomotives! We have to find an effective replacement! In fact, at present, the traffic in the main cities of the empire is basically bicycles and horse-drawn carriages (trams have not yet been invented and used), and rich businessmen are basically willing to pay for a steam car to drive out to show their wealth and status, but the pollution and influence of steam locomotives are too great, in the middle of the 19th century, Britain, France, the United States and other countries have many people develop steam cars, and make steam buses to run in or between cities, but because of the loud noise of steam buses, black smoke, damage to the road, and unsafe, cause public opposition and stop driving. In 1865, the British Parliament passed the Red Flag Act, which limited the speed of traffic to no more than 3 km/h in the city and 6 km/h in the countryside. The empire also has similar bills, in fact, these bills all hinder the development of the automobile industry, which is why Lin Hong is so urgent about internal combustion engines and real cars.

"Your Majesty, this will take time after all, and we have already tried our best."

"It's okay, I don't rush, don't rush."

"Yes, Your Majesty, but Your Majesty, our Ministry of Scientific Research, the Automobile Institute has developed an electric car, but the current battery technology is not perfect, and the storage power is too small, so the driving performance of the electric car is not as good as this Volkswagen. In addition, Your Majesty, the shell you mentioned, our technicians found that if you put on the shell you described, this Volkswagen would not be able to move at all. So Your Majesty, you can only look at the open-topped one. ”

"Forget it, it's okay to drive to the palace and have fun." Lin Hong came to pick up the car today, but this Volkswagen really made him lack interest, but there is no victory