Catalytic reforming early catalyst

Fluid Hydroforming An early catalytic reforming process in which the catalyst was used in a continuously regenerated fluidized bed. Developed by the MW Kellogg Company. 

UGI [United Gas Improvement Company Also called Ugite. A regenerative catalytic reforming process for making town gas and liquid hydrocarbons from oil. The catalyst was a fixed bed of hot, refractory pebbles. Developed by UGI Company, Philadelphia, PA, in the early 1940s. 

Early reported studies on the application of bifunctional catalysts to the foregoing reactions were those of Haensel and Donaldson (H2), Ciapetta and Hunter (C2, C4, C5), Heinemann and co-workers (H3), and Hettinger and co-workers (H7). These reactions form the heart of catalytic reforming and have been exploited commercially in a number of processes, including the following ... 

Isomerization catalysts were developed along two paths—by Friedel-Crafts halide systems or by dual site heterogeneous catalysts, originating with the commercial introduction of platinum-aluminas for catalytic reforming in the 1940,s. The Friedel-Crafts systems (aluminum chloride-hydrocarbon complexes) were used exclusively during the early stages of... 

It is no exaggeration to say that without catalysts Germany would have been in no condition to pursue its war effort until November 1918. Likewise, if Houdry had not developed in the early days of World War II its catalytic cracking process, the United States would have found it very hard to provide its bombers with light fuel. It was also through catalytic reforming that the United States managed to obtain from petroleum the toluene needed to produce TNT between 1941 and 1945. 

This monograph describes research on bimetallic catalysts conducted at the Exxon Research and Engineering laboratories since the early 1960s. Much of the monograph is concerned with research directed toward the validation and elucidation of the bimetallic cluster concept. Some discussion is devoted also to the technological aspects of these systems, with emphasis on their application for the catalytic reforming of petroleum fractions. 

An early application of a combined steam reformer/catalytic combustor on the meso scale was realized by Polman et al. [101]. They fabricated a reactor similar to an automotive metallic monolith with channel dimensions in the millimeter range (Figure 2.65). The plates were connected by diffusion bonding and the catalyst was introduced by wash coating. The reactor was operated at temperatures between 550 and 700 °C 99.98% conversion was achieved for the combustion reaction and 97% for the steam reforming side. A volume of < 1.5 dm3 per kW electrical power output of the reformer alone was regarded as feasible at that time, but not yet realized. 

Moreover, eqn 6.13 can be applied to a reversible catalytic reaction in which the catalyst acts as a co-reactant in an early step and is restored as a co-product in a later one. Its concentration, Q, then appears in both the numerator and denominator on the right-hand side of eqn 6.13, and so cancels, in accordance with the requirement that the presence of a catalyst does not affect equilibrium. In the rate equation developed from eqns 6.4 to 6.6, Crat appears as co-factor in both terms of the numerator. This makes the rate first-order in the catalyst, provided CMl does not also appear in some terms of denominator, as it will unless the catalyst reacts in the first step and is reformed in the last, as is usually true. 

The alloy catalysts used in these early studies were low surface area materials, commonly metal powders or films. The surface areas, for example, were two orders of magnitude lower than that of platinum in a commercial reforming catalyst. Hence these alloys were not of interest as practical catalysts. The systems emphasized in these studies were combinations of metallic elements that formed continuous series of solid solutions, such as nickel-copper and palladium-gold. The use of such systems presumably made it possible to vary the electronic structure of a metal crystal in a known and convenient manner, and thereby to determine its influence on catalytic activity. Bimetallic combinations of elements exhibiting limited miscibility in the bulk were not of interest. Aspects of bimetallic catalysts other than questions related to the influence of bulk electronic structure received little attention in these studies. 

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