If Gasoline is made up of carbon and hydrogen, why do we need oil to make it?

Question

This is the definition from HowStuffWorks:

What is gasoline?
Gasoline is known as an aliphatic hydrocarbon. In other words, gasoline is made up of molecules composed of nothing but hydrogen and carbon arranged in chains. Gasoline molecules have from seven to 11 carbons in each chain. Here are some common configurations:

H H H H H H H
| | | | | | |
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-H Heptane
| | | | | | |
H H H H H H H


H H H H H H H H
| | | | | | | |
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-H Octane
| | | | | | | |
H H H H H H H H


H H H H H H H H H
| | | | | | | | |
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-H Nonane
| | | | | | | | |
H H H H H H H H H


H H H H H H H H H H
| | | | | | | | | |
H-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-C-H Decane
| | | | | | | | | |
H H H H H H H H H H

It just seemed to me that since oil is expensive as it is currently, that someone would try and develop a way to create it without oil.

Please excuse the word create, maybe not the right word.

Not sure why I should be criticized for asking though, it is after all, how you learn.

Answer 1

The carbon for gasoline comes from the oil.

Answer 2

Imagine a cake. You have flour, eggs, milk, and sugar. You can't just mix those together in a bowl and serve it as cake. It has to be baked for a specific amount of time at a specific temperature.

This is sort of like why you can't just mix carbon and hydrogen and make gasoline. Cargon and hydrogen are just the building blocks and you have to process them in a way to make gasoline. The cost in creating gasoline from basic carbon and hydrogen would cost a lot more than extracting gasoline that is in oil.

Now, there are people trying to figure out a good way to turn methane into a fuel for cars. It is carbon and hyrdrogen but it is a lot simpler molecule. It can be produced cheaply.

Answer 3

Gasoline is not "made". It's what is left over when oil is refined. Gasoline comes out at every step of the process of refining other things from the oil. It's like "refining" (chopping) ice and getting water, though there are other thing besides ice chips that come out of oil. Oil can be refined several times for several different chemicals. Each time it's processed you get gasoline.

Answer 4

Since gasoline is not made up of carbon and hydrogen, your "if" falls apart and your question is not valid. Learn a bit more about the chemical composition of gasoline and the refining process before asking this type of question.

Answer 5

Because oil is made out of carbon and hydrogen. Gas is distilled, among other distillates, from oil. You could make gas from other sources of carbon and hydrogen but it would be quite a bit more expensive. As an example, you could get carbon from coal and hydrogen from water but you would have to separate hydrogen from the oxygen bond which requires energy to do.

Answer 6

Oil is rich in both hydrogen and carbon. In essence it is already made and all that needs to happen is fractional distillation to produce gas, diesel etc.. The refineries (infrastructure) is already in place to do this at a least cost basis. However, it can be done chemically but at a huge price for consumers.

Answer 7

Know how hard it would be to put millions trillions of molucules togeather to make one drop of gasoline? It is derived from oil because it can be a lot easier to extract than to do it in a lab.

Answer 8

all oil is considerd fuel oil gasoline is a byproduct/product of certain types of refining as is e-85 ethenol a byproduct of refining corn for yeast and other products

Answer 9

oil provides the energy(when hot) to combine the to in a chemical reaction

Answer 10

It is the cheapest way to get the carbon you need.