فارسیCrude oil is the most important source of paraffin wax. Oil Refineries produce two main streams product category from crude oil; Fuels and lubricants.
In production of lubricants, refineries use atmospheric distillation residue as raw material and process it further until finished lubricant product is made. The byproduct of this process is called SLACK WAX which is the raw material for paraffin wax manufactures in order to produce paraffin wax.
Slack wax in general is a mixture of paraffin wax and Oil which depend on the origin of material can contain 40% oil content.
The other and most advance process of making paraffin wax is by Conversion of natural gas, gasified coal and biomass to synthetic fuels.
It is proven that commercially processing slack wax is more economical compare to conversion of natural gas into paraffin wax. However, recent changes in oil and gas industry and environmental concerns shifted the view of manufacturers of paraffin wax to use advance manufacturing process and use natural gas as feedstock. There are several methods which manufactures of paraffin wax and refineries can obtain paraffin wax from slack wax. The oldest method is Appling pressure on slack wax in order to separate oil from wax and filter the recovered wax. paraffin wax derived from this process is outdated in today’s world but still local manufactures of paraffin wax use this process.