The refining of crude petroleum owes its origin to the profitable drilling of the first oil nicely inTitusville, Pennsylvania, U.S., in 1859. Prior to that point,petroleum was available solely in very small quantities from pure seepage of subsurface oil in numerous areas throughout the world. However, such restricted availability restricted the uses for petroleum to medicinal and specialty purposes. With the invention of ock oilin northwestern Pennsylvania,crude oil turned out there in sufficient amount to inspire the development of larger-scale processing techniques. The earliest refineries employed simpledistillation units, or tills,to separate the varied constituents of petroleum by heating the crude oil mixture in a vessel and condensing the resultant vapours into liquid fractions. Initially the first product waskerosene, which proved to be a more ample, cleaner-burning lamp oil of more constant high quality thanwhale oil or animal fat.

The lowest-boiling uncooked product from the nonetheless was traight runaphtha, a forerunner of unfinishedgasoline (petrol). Its preliminary business application was primarily as asolvent. Greater-boiling supplies had been found to be effective as lubricants andfuel oils, however they were largely novelties at first.

The perfection of oil-drilling techniques rapidly unfold to Russia, and by 1890 refineries there were producing massive quantities of kerosene and gasoline oils. The event of theinternal-combustion engine in the later years of the 19th century created a small marketplace for crude naphtha. But the development of theautomobile on the flip of the century sharply elevated the demand for high quality gasoline, and this lastly offered a house for the petroleum fractions that have been too volatile to be included in kerosene. As demand for automotive gas rose, methods for steady distillation of crude oil have been developed.