This sounds very cool, but I admit to not knowing much about it. We got any chemists here?
Compressing natural gas (CH4) to very high pressures (Compressed Natural Gas (CNG)) or low temperatures (Liquified Natural Gas (LNG)) doesn't change the composition of the methane compound.
Now, the carbon atom by itself is fairly electronegative (-4), and so there's plenty of space for other atoms to bond to it. Give a carbon atom four hydrogen atoms, and you have methane. If you can remove one of the hydrogen atoms and attach another carbon atom, you've begun a hydrocarbon chain. A bonded chain of up to four carbon atoms will remain gaseous, where as between five and twenty carbon atoms in a chain will be a liquid, and more than twenty will be a solid. Moar carbon=moar viscous.
So Royal Dutch Shell has found a way to knock hydrogen atoms off of carbon ones, chain somewhere between five and twenty (probably closer to 5-10, as 0W-40 oil isn't very thick) carbon atoms without letting them bond to themselves (forming a benzene ring molecule), add their colouring and special trademarked stuff, and package it as an engine oil. That is awesome.
The old way, of course, being to heat crude oil long enough to break the chemical bonds of the hydrocarbon chains and skim off the glop until you've got what you want. You can't possibly get 100% mix of the carbon chains you want, so they call the rest "impurities".
Likewise, with this new method, unless you're manipulating every compound one at a time, the new Pennzoil
must have some longer chains and some shorter chains than what they want. Wouldn't those be impurities too?
None the less, if that's the oil that Ralph says my car needs, that's the oil it gets. It's only $9 a quart.
Sources:
Wikipedia (of course)
The
Encyclopedia of Earth
Foster Learning