释义 |
refinery|rɪˈfaɪnərɪ| [f. refine v. + -ery.] 1. a. A place, building, or establishment, where refining (of sugar, oil, metal, etc.) is carried on. Also attrib.
1727–41Chambers Cycl. s.v. Sugar, In a refinery there are usually two coppers, the one serving to clarify, the other to boil the clarified liquor. 1758Reid tr. Macquer's Chym. I. 389 The large refineries of Gold and Silver by the means of Lead furnish a great quantity of this material. 1804W. Taylor in Ann. Rev. II. 327 American and other settlers would have had..their refineries in every island. 1841W. Spalding Italy & It. Isl. II. 165 The capital had silk-works of all kinds,..to these it added soap-works, refineries, chemical-works, lace-works. 1939Thorpe's Dict. Appl. Chem. (ed. 4) III. 348/2 The largest refinery plant in this country is at Prescot, where copper is refined..from blister copper. 1951Dylan Thomas Let. Jan. (1966) 351 Today I was taken to see a great new black-towered hissing and coiling monster, just erected in the middle of the refinery. 1954Thorpe's Dict. Appl. Chem. (ed. 4) XI. 187/1 Refined sugar presupposes treatment with bone charcoal in refineries as distinct from factories dealing with sugar beet or sugar cane. 1959Listener 2 Apr. 582/1 Refinery gases, oil, and now refrigerated methane. 1970W. G. Roberts Quest for Oil ix. 93 The newest refineries use desulphurisation processes of this kind to treat a wide cut from the light end of the crude oil right up to kerosine or gas oil. 1981J. Simpson Moscow Requiem ii. v. 159 The coast of Saudi Arabia and the peninsula where stood the second largest oil refinery in the world. b. A furnace for the conversion of cast into malleable iron.
1825J. Nicholson Operat. Mechanic 334 The method of releasing the pig-iron of its carbon, or of converting it into what is called wrought or malleable iron is, by placing it in an open furnace, termed a refinery. 1884C. G. W. Lock Workshop Receipts Ser. iii. 250/2 When grey pig-iron is used for making malleable iron, it must first be converted into white iron by the ‘whitening’ process in a ‘refinery’. attrib.1839Ure Dict. Arts 712 One of the numerous refinery furnaces. Ibid., D is the refinery hearth. †2. Refinements; a refinement. Obs. rare.
1746W. Horsley Fool (1748) I. 272 Painted it over with silly Glosses and Refinery. Ibid. 291 That play in Circumlocutions and Refineries. |