Barry Miller, age 9, of  Lindin, Penn., for his question:

CAN KEROSENE BE USED AS FUEL?

Kerosene's greatest use is in jet aircraft engines. Both conventional ramjet engines and also turboprop equipment use kerosene as fuel. Commercial jet aircraft in both Canada and the United States use kerosene but military aircraft use a mixture of kerosene and gasoline.

Kerosene is a petroleum product that is used chiefly as fuel. Atone time kerosene lamps were the main source of artificial lighting.A Canadian doctor and geologist named Abraham Gesner patented adistilling process for refining oil in 1854. He produced an improvedlighting oil which he called kerosene. He picked the name from the Greek word keros, which means wax.   Gesner refined his oil from coal and,for this reason, kerosenewas called coal oil.In the petroleum industry,kerosene is spelled "kerosine."In many parts of the world today kerosene supplies lighting andcooking fuel when electricity isn't available.

Many farmers also use kerosene to run tractors and other farm machinery. In some small villages and on some farms, kerosene operates the electric generators that charge storage batteries. The fluid is also   used as a solvent for weed killers and insecticides.  A petroleum refinery process is used to produce kerosene. Industry processes it then to remove impurities such as sulfur compounds and some of the aromatic hydrocarbons. Kerosene is treated with a suitable solvent like liquid sulfur dioxide, which dissolves some of the impurities. Usually this process is repeated several times.  In the United States,  about 219 million barrels of kerosene are produced each year. 

Kerosene is a mixture of hydrocarbons, compounds which contain the elements of hydrogen and carbon. This mixture boils at between 150and 300 degrees, Centigrade.  Some of the compounds in kerosene are aromatic hydrocarbons.  When kerosene is used as a solvent for weed killers and insecticides, a high aromatic hydrocarbon content is desirable because it makes the substance a better solvent. But the aromatics in kerosene producea poor flame for lighting purposes and much smoke.  Commercial kerosene is a mixture of hydrocarbons. They contain only the elements of hydrogen and carbon.  In the early days of the oil industry, the refining process consisted chiefly of distillation. Oilmen discarded the parts of crude petroleum that could not be distilled into kerosene or made into greases.