hydrocarbon

in a sentence

It was a terrible thing to see, so close, so low, packed with chlorides, benzines, phenols, hydrocarbons, or whatever the precise toxic content.†  (source) Don DeLillo, White Noise, 1985

In the gloomy air of daytime Lima—the sun filtering down through thin fog from the Pacific, then through the perpetual ground-level strata of dust and hydrocarbons—I stood outside Socios headquarters and looked up toward Carabayllo's hills and realized that the lights I'd seen the night before were mounted on highway-style pylons, towering over one —and two-room shacks.†  (source) Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, 2003

Over the roar of the engine and in a bluish haze of hydrocarbons I listened to her in numb discomfort, praying for the purity of the beach.†  (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

They strip the hydrogen from some of it (releasing the oxygen) and use it to make the complex hydrocarbons that are the plant itself.†  (source) Andy Weir, The Martian, 2011

Hydrocarbon.†  (source) Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, 2007

polymerization of hydrocarbons.†  (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

"Unless it's hydrocarbon it doesn't do me much good," Tyler said.†  (source) John Ringo, Live Free or Die, 2010

The arguments and counter-arguments were complex, but boiled down to a simple substrate: whenever a worker would announce that he had found a fossil, or a proteinaceous hydrocarbon, or other indication of life within a meteorite, the critics would claim sloppy lab technique and contamination with earth-origin matter and organisms.†  (source) Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain, 1969

A lot about Bujumbura felt familiar, common to the capitals of impoverished countries: the potholes, the dust and noise, the hydrocarbon haze, the close calls between pedestrians and vehicles traveling too fast — "If you drove like this in the States, you would lose your license," Deo said.†  (source) Tracy Kidder, Strength in What Remains, 2009