Naphtha is a flammable liquidhydrocarbon mixture. Mixtures labelled naphtha have been produced from natural gas condensates, petroleum distillates, and the distillation of coal tar and peat. In different industries and regions naphtha may also be crude oil or refined products such as kerosene. Mineral spirits, also historically known as "naphtha", are not the same chemical. Nephi and naphthar are sometimes used as a synonyms.
Etymology
The word naphtha is from Latin and Ancient Greek, derived from Middle Persiannaft, the latter meaning of which was an assimilation from the Akkadiannapṭu and Hebrew נֵפְט neft. In Ancient Greek, it was used to refer to any sort of petroleum or pitch. In the Song of the Three Children the Greek word νάφθα designates one of the materials used to stoke the fiery furnace. The translation of Charles Brenton renders this as "rosin". The book of II Maccabees tells how a "thick water" was put on a sacrifice at the time of Nehemiah and when the sun shone it caught fire. It adds that "those around Nehemiah termed this 'Nephthar', which means Purification, but it is called Nephthaei by the many ." It enters the wordnapalm, a contraction of the "na" of naphthenic acid and "palm" of palmitic acid, originally made from a mixture of naphthenic acid combined with aluminium and magnesium salts of palmitic acid. Naphtha is the root of the word naphthalene, and can also be recognised in the word phthalate, and the paint colour phthalo blue. In older usage, "naphtha" simply meant crude oil, but this usage is now obsolete in English. It was also used for mineral spirits, originally the main active ingredient in Fels Napthalaundry soap. The Ukrainian and Belarusian word :uk:нафта|нафта, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian "nafta" and the Persiannaft mean "crude oil". The Russian word нефть means "crude oil", but нафта is a synonym of ligroin. Also, in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Italy, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonianafta is colloquially used to indicate diesel fuel and crude oil. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, nafta was historically used for both diesel fuel and crude oil, but its use for crude oil is now obsolete and it generally indicates diesel fuel. In Bulgarian, nafta means diesel fuel, while neft, as well as petrol, means crude oil. Nafta is also used in everyday parlance in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay to refer to gasoline/petrol. In Poland, the word means kerosene, and colloquially crude oil. In Flemish, the word naft is used colloquially for gasoline. There is a hypothesis that the word is connected with the name of the Indo-Iranian god Apam Napat, which occurs in Vedic and in Avestic; the name means "grandson of waters", and the Vedas describes him as emerging from water golden and shining "with bright rays", perhaps inspired by a burning seepage of natural gas.
Types
Various qualifiers have been added to the term "naphtha" by different sources in an effort to make it more specific: One source distinguishes by boiling point: Another source differentiates light and heavy comments on the hydrocarbon structure, but offers a less precise dividing line: Both of these are useful definitions, but they are incompatible with one another and the latter does not provide for mixes containing both 6 and 7 carbon atoms per molecule. These terms are also sufficiently broad that they are not widely useful.
Naphtha is used to dilute heavy crude oil to reduce its viscosity and enable/facilitate transport; undiluted heavy crude cannot normally be transported by pipeline, and may also be difficult to pump onto oil tankers. Other common dilutants include natural-gas condensate, and light crude. However, naphtha is a particularly efficient dilutant and can be recycled from diluted heavy crude after transport and processing. The importance of oil dilutants has increased as global production of lighter crude oils has fallen and shifted to exploitation of heavier reserves.
Fuel
Light naphtha is used as a fuel in some commercial applications. One notable example is the Zippo lighter, which draws naphtha into a wick from a reservoir to be ignited using the flint and wheel. It is also a fuel for camping stoves and oil lanterns, naphtha’s low boiling point making it easy to ignite. Naphtha is sometimes preferred over kerosene due to a lower incidence of fuel line clogging.
Plastics
Naphtha is a crucial component in the production of plastics
