flammable pale yellow or colourless oily liquid with a not-unpleasant characteristic odour. It is obtained from petroleum and used for burning in lamps and domestic heaters or furnaces, as a fuel or fuel component for jet engines, and as a solvent for greases and insecticides.

Kerosene accounts for 10 to 25 percent of the total volume of crude petroleum. It is separated physically from the other portions by fractional distillation. It can also be produced chemically by cracking, or decomposing, the less volatile portions of mineral oils at atmospheric pressure and elevated temperatures.

Kerosene was first manufactured in the 1850s from coal tar and shale oils, but petroleum became the major source after 1859, when E.L. Drake drilled the first petroleum well in Pennsylvania. Because of its use in lamps (see kerosene lamp), kerosene was the major refinery product until the automobile made gasoline important.

Chemically, kerosene is a mixture of hydrocarbons; the chemical composition depends on its source, but it usually consists of about 10 different hydrocarbons, each containing 10 to 16 carbon atoms per molecule; the constituents include n-dodecane, alkyl benzenes, and naphthalene and its derivatives. Kerosene is less volatile than gasoline; it boils between about 140 and 320 °C (285 and 610 °F).