Catalytic cracking industrial processes

Perovskite membranes have also been proposed for the production of oxygen enriched air for industrial processes like ammonia synthesis, the Qaus process, and the regeneration of the catalyst for the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process [307]. 

The use of zeolite Y (FAU) as a catalyst in the petrochemicals industry and in fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) processes is advantageous for five reasons ... 

The Phenox process (254) removes phenol (qv) from the efduent from catalytic cracking in the petroleum industry. Extraction of phenols from ammoniacal coke-oven Hquor may show a small profit. Acetic acid can be recovered by extraction from dilute waste streams (255). Oils are recovered by extraction from oily wastewater from petroleum and petrochemical operations. Solvent extraction is employed commercially for the removal of valuable... 

Fluid bed reactors became important to the petroleum industry with the development of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) early in the Second World War. Today FCC is still widely used. The following section surveys the various fluid bed processes and examines the benefits of fluidization. The basic theories of fluidization phenomena are also reviewed. 

Solvent extraction may also be used to reduce asphaltenes and metals from heavy fractions and residues before using them in catalytic cracking. The organic solvent separates the resids into demetallized oil with lower metal and asphaltene content than the feed, and asphalt with high metal content. Figure 3-2 shows the IFP deasphalting process and Table 3-2 shows the analysis of feed before and after solvent treatment. Solvent extraction is used extensively in the petroleum refining industry. Each process uses its selective solvent, but, the basic principle is the same as above. 

Fuel industry is of increasing importance because of the rapidly growing energy needs worldwide. Many processes in fuel industry, e.g. fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) [1], pyrolysis and hydrogenation of heavy oils [2], Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis [3,4], methanol and dimethyl ether (DME) synthesis [5,6], are all carried out in multiphase reactors. The reactors for these processes are very large in scale. Unfortunately, they are complicated in design and their scale-up is very difflcult. Therefore, more and more attention has been paid to this field. The above mentioned chemical reactors, in which we are especially involved like deep catalytic pyrolysis and one-step synthesis of dimethyl ether, are focused on in this paper. 

The process of hydro-cracking was already developed in 1927 by the German company I. G. Farben Industrie, to transform lignite into gasoline. As a support for thermal or catalytic cracking, hydro-cracking is used nowadays to crack hydrocarbons that are more difficult to crack. 

In the United States, approximately one-third of all processed crude oil, amounting to about 5 x 10° bbl/day, is catalytically converted over fluidized catalysts. Over 500 tons of catalyst are required daily, yielding sales that in 1987 were estimated at -250 million dollars (1). Thus, in terms of catalyst usage and product value, catalytic cracking is still the most important unit operation of the petroleumrefining industry. This year, the worldwide sales of catalysts to the petroleum, petrochemical, and chemical industry are expected to exceed 2.4 billion dollars, and catalyst producers are preparing themselves for the turn of the century when catalysts are projected to become a 5 billion dollars per year global business (2). 

Prior to 1938, gasoline was obtained from thermal-cracking plants then the Houdry fixed-bed catalytic cracking process led to the development of a fluidized-bed process by Standard Oil for the catalytic production of motor fuels (4-8). Acid-treated clays of the montmorilIonite type were the first fluid-cracking catalysts widely employed by the industry. However, the ever greater demand for aviation fuels during the 1939-1945 period prompted the search for more active and selective catalysts. Research on novel catalyst... 

In response to recent federal and local environmental concerns (e.g., industrial emission controls and lead phase-out) and to the growing interest of refiners in cracking residual fuels, researchers have generated new families of cracking catalysts. There is now a need to review the merits of these newly developed materials. This volume contains contributions from researchers involved in the preparation and characterization of cracking catalysts. Other important aspects of fluid catalytic cracking, such as feedstocks and process hardware effects in refining, have been intentionally omitted because of time limitations and should be treated separately in future volumes. 

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