Renewable transportation fuels from water and carbon dioxide

The transition from fossil to renewable fuels is one of the most important challenges of the future. The SUN-to-LIQUID project takes on this challenge by producing renewable transportation fuels from water and CO2 with concentrated ...

The impact of solar lighting in rural Kenya

While climate change has led many high-income countries to increase their efforts to improve energy efficiency and to invest in renewable energies, households in low-income countries still face another energy challenge: more ...

Kerosene subsidies slow transition to clean energy

Billions of people around the world rely on polluting and inefficient kerosene lamps for household lighting. Yet transitioning away from kerosene and reducing the associated impacts is more complicated than simply supplying ...

Power generation technology for ammonia combustion in a gas turbine

Researchers have successfully generated 21 kW of power using a gas turbine driven by bifuel where kerosene equivalent to 30 % was replaced by ammonia in a commissioned research under the Energy Carrier project of the Cross-Ministerial ...

A homemade solar lamp for developing countries

(Phys.org) —The solar lamp developed by the start-up LEDsafari is a more effective, safer, and less expensive form of illumination than the traditional oil lamp currently used by more than one billion people in the world. ...

Solar lantern for people living without electricity

Panasonic Corporation today announced that it has developed a solar lantern that doubles as a charger for people living without electricity. With a built-in rechargeable battery to store solar energy during the day, the lantern ...

page 1 from 3

Kerosene

Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros (κηρός wax). The word "Kerosene" was registered as a trademark by Abraham Gesner in 1854, and for several years, only the North American Gas Light Company and the Downer Company (to which Gesner had granted the right) were allowed to call their lamp oil "Kerosene". It eventually became a genericized trademark.

In the United Kingdom, two grades of heating oil use this name - premium kerosene (more commonly known in the UK as paraffin) BS2869 Class C1, the lightest grade, which is usually used for lanterns, wick heaters, and combustion engines; and standard kerosene BS2869 Class C2, a heavier distillate, which is used as domestic heating oil. Premium Kerosene is usually sold in 5 or 20 litre containers from hardware, camping and garden stores and is often dyed purple. Standard kerosene is usually dispensed in bulk by a tanker and is colourless.

Kerosene is usually called paraffin (sometimes paraffin oil) in Southeast Asia and South Africa (not to be confused with the much more viscous paraffin oil used as a laxative, or the waxy solid also called paraffin wax or just paraffin); variants of petroleum in parts of Central Europe (not to be confused with crude oil to which it refers in English); the term "kerosene" is usual in much of Canada, the United States, Australia (where it is usually referred to colloquially as "kero") and New Zealand.

Kerosene is widely used to power jet-engined aircraft (jet fuel) and some rockets, but is also commonly used as a heating fuel and for fire toys such as poi. In parts of Asia, where the price of kerosene is subsidized, it fuels outboard motors rigged on small fishing craft.

Kerosene is typically (and in some jurisdictions legally required to be) stored in a blue container to avoid its getting confused with the much more flammable gasoline, which is typically kept in a red container. Diesel fuel is generally stored in yellow containers for the same reason.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA