Petroleum coke (petroleum coke, abbreviated as petroleum coke) is a
carbonaceous solid derived from coking units in a petroleum refinery or
other cracking processes. Other cokes have traditionally been derived from coal.
Petroleum coke is coke which, in particular, is derived from a process of
final cracking, a thermally based chemical engineering process that splits hydrocarbons
of long-chain oil into shorter chains, which takes place in units
called coking units. (Other types of coke are derived from coal.) Saying
succinctly, coke is the "carbonization product of fractions of
high boiling point hydrocarbons obtained in petroleum processing
(heavy residues)." Petroleum coke is also produced in petroleum production
synthetic crude (sincrude) from bitumen extracted from the tar sands of Canada
and from the oil sands of the Orinoco in Venezuela.