Natural gas

HGLs were initially considered a nuisance, but they are now high-value products. Shortly before World War I, a problem in a natural gas pipeline occurred where a section of pipeline in a natural gas field ran under a cold stream. The low temperature caused liquids to form and sometimes block the flow of natural gas in the pipeline. As a result of this discovery, natural gas processing facilities were built to cool and compress natural gas, which separated the liquid form of hydrocarbon gas from the natural gas. The HGLs then became marketable commodities as fuels and as feedstock for making other petroleum products and petrochemicals.

Shigetaka Kurita is often credited with inventing emoji in 1999, though Japanese conglomerate SoftBank actually released the first set of emojis in 1997. Kurita’s emoji, which were intended for a Japanese user base, were very simple—only 12 pixels by 12 pixels—and were inspired by manga art and kanji characters. In order to attract Japanese customers, Apple hid an emoji keyboard in the first iPhone back in 2007, but North American users quickly became aware of the keyboard. Now, emoji are available in almost all messaging apps, and while different apps have distinct emoji styles, emoji can translate across platforms, thanks to Unicode. This is why an iPhone user is able to receive the smiling pile of poo emoji from someone using a Samsung Galaxy.

Fossilfuel

The Internet has greatly changed the way we communicate. Since body language and verbal tone do not translate in our text messages or e-mails, we’ve developed alternate ways to convey nuanced meaning. The most prominent change to our online style has been the addition of two new-age hieroglyphic languages: emoticons and emoji.

The emoticon came into being after a joke went wrong at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982. A gag about a fake mercury spill posted to an online message board sent the university into a tizzy, and because of this confusion, Dr. Scott E. Fahlman suggested that jokes and nonjokes be marked by two sets of characters we now recognize as standard emoticons: the smiley face :-) and the frowning face :-(. After this, emoticons were a big hit among Internet users.

Liquid fuelexample

Because HGLs straddle the gas/liquid boundary, their versatility and high energy density in liquid form make them useful for many purposes:

Emoji (from the Japanese e, “picture,” and moji, “character”) are a slightly more recent invention. Not to be confused with their predecessor, emoji are pictographs of faces, objects, and symbols. You’re probably familiar with the distinct style of Apple’s emoji: yellow cartoony faces with various expressions, as well as families, buildings, animals, food objects, mathematical symbols, and more.

10 examples ofliquidfuels

So, if you come across a smiley face that contains a character you can find on your computer keyboard, it’s an emoticon. If it’s a little cartoon figure that is free from the binds of punctuation, numbers, and letters, it’s an emoji.

Natural gas and crude oil are mixtures of different hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are molecules of carbon and hydrogen in various combinations. Hydrocarbon gas liquids (HGL) are hydrocarbons that occur as gases at atmospheric pressure and as liquids under higher pressures. HGLs can also be liquefied by cooling. The specific pressures and temperatures at which the gases liquefy vary by type of HGL. HGLs may be described as being light or heavy according to the number of carbon atoms and hydrogen atoms in an HGL molecule.

Let’s start with the older of the two: the emoticon. Emoticons are punctuation marks, letters, and numbers used to create pictorial icons that generally display an emotion or sentiment. (That’s actually where the portmanteau “emoticon” comes from: emotional icon.) Oh, and because of the limits of our keyboard, most emoticons need to be read sideways.

Propane and butane were discovered in 1912 by Dr. Walter Snelling, a U.S. scientist. He identified these gases in gasoline, and he found that cooling and pressuring these gases changed them to liquid. He also learned that the liquefied gases could be stored and transported in pressurized containers.

HGLs are found in raw natural gas and crude oil. HGLs are extracted from natural gas at natural gas processing plants and from crude oil when it is refined into petroleum products. Natural gas plant liquids, which account for most HGL production in the United States, fall solely into the alkanes category. Refinery production accounts for the remainder of U.S. alkanes production, and it accounts for all olefins production data the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes. Greater volumes of olefins are produced at petrochemical plants from HGL and heavier feedstock. EIA does not collect or report petrochemical production data.