Question

A barrel of oil is exactly 42 gal. How many liters of oil are in a barrel?

Short answer

The volume of oil in the barrel in liters is 159 liters.

Step-by-step solution

Describing the barrel and gallon terms

A standard barrel stores 42 gallons of oil. The volume of the barrel is considered to be equal to 42 gallons of liquid.

\(1\,\,{\rm{oil}}\,{\rm{barrel}}\,\, = \,\,42\,\,{\rm{gallons}}\,\, = \,\,159\,\,{\rm{liters}}\)

The volume of one oil barrel is approximately 158.98 Liters. According to the American Petroleum Institute, a standard barrel contains 159 Liters of oil at a pressure of 101.325 kPa and a temperature of 15.60C.

Describing the conversion of gallons into U.S. gallon

The US gallon (US gal), defined as 3.785411784 L, (231 cubic inches) which is used in the US and some Latin American and Caribbean countries; and. the US dry gallon ("usd rygal"), defined as 1⁄8 US bushel (exactly 4.40488377086 L).

One imperial gallon is equivalent to approximately 1.2 U.S. liquid gallons.

Hence,

42 ×1.2 =50.4U.S. gallon

Describing the conversion of gallons into liters

The gallon defined as 3.785 L,

Hence,

42×3.7854 =158.9868 L

Approximately 159 Liters