Future Outlook for Alkylation

A tremendous growth in alkylation is expected for many years in the production of both motor alkylate and petrochemicals. The production of aviation alkylate is not expected to increase in the future, because of the increase in jet-type airplanes on the other hand, it is not expected to decrease to any great extent. 

The great increase in interest in alkylation for petrochemicals has brought about renewed interest in new alkylation catalysts, and many different new catalysts have already been developed. The trend is definitely toward solid catalysts operating at temperatures which do not require refrigeration. 

American Petroleum Institute Research Project 45, June 30, 1956. 

Considerable attention has been given for many years to the nature of the forces active in chemisorption and catalysis and in particular to the electronic nature of these forces these investigations have in the main treated the surface as a rigid structure, often considered as energetically uniform, with no mobility of its constituent atoms at the temperature of catalytic reactions. This assumption of rigidity is usually valid up to around room temperature and for metals is often true at quite high temperatures. There are, of course, some well-known cases where the gas dissolves in the metal, e.g., H2 into Pd 02 into Zr N2 into a-Fe, etc., and also instances where the adsorbate induces mobility in the upper layer of the adsorbent, e.g., H2 on K [see de Boer (I)], but these are exceptional. 

The electronic interpretation of simple reactions upon metal surfaces, although not everywhere satisfactory, is successful, for instance, in explain- 

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