The History of Petroleum Cracking in the 20th Century

Abstract

An overview of the development of thermal and catalytic cracking for petroleum refining is presented. The introduction of research departments in a petroleum company led to the development of the Burton Process for thermal cracking to enhance the yield of transportation fuels demand caused by the rapid increase in the number of autos on the highways. As other companies developed processes to compete with the Burton Process, competition led to a number of legal actions that are briefly detailed. As these court actions were reaching a climax, the introduction of catalytic cracking by Eugene Houdry reduced the need for thermal cracking processes. Houdry's efforts required outstanding advances in process control, process engineering and catalysis. The discovery that the transport of finely divided solids by a gas resembled fluid flow allowed Standard Oil (New Jersey) to develop the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process. The entry of the U.S. into W.W.II and the urgent need for high octane aviation fuel permitted the development of FCC at an astoundingly rapid rate where, supported by government guarantees, a commercial sized reactor could quickly become the pilot plant for the development of ever larger and improved plants. The need for catalysts with higher activity led to the replacement of natural clays by high surface area amorphous silica alumina catalysts during the 1930-1940s. These catalysts were in turn replaced in the 1960s by the synthetic and natural zeolite catalysts. The revolutionary advances during the century -thermal cracking, fixed-bed catalytic cracking, fluid-bed catalytic cracking, synthetic silica-alumina catalysts and synthetic zeolite catalysts - were superimposed on a background of many evolutionary advances.