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Petroleum Processing

Catalytic Cracking Processes

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Increasing demand for gasoline, along with the need to produce high-octane gasoline for increasingly more powerful spark ignition engines, led to the development and maturation of catalytic cracking processes just before and during World War II. Following the development of a fixed-bed (Houdry process, 1936) and a moving-bed (Thermafor Catalytic Cracking, 1941) catalytic cracking process, fluid-bed catalytic cracking (FCC, 1942) became the most widely used process worldwide because of the improved thermal efficiency of the process and the high product selectivity achieved, particularly after the introduction of crystalline zeolites as catalysts in the 1960s.

Table 7.4 shows a timeline for the development of the catalytic cracking processes. The evolution of catalytic cracking processes is an exemplary showcase in chemical engineering for discussing the advancement of reactor configuration, driven by energy conservation and process kinetics. The evolution of these processes is discussed in the following subsections.

A time-line for development of catalytic cracking processes and major attributes of the commercial processes
Table 7.4. A timeline for development of catalytic cracking processes and major attributes of the commercial processes.
Source: Dr. Semih Eser