Murphree fluid catalytic cracking

The Houdry fixed-bed cyclic units were soon displaced in the 1940s by the superior Fluid Catalytic Cracking process pioneered by Warren K. Lewis of MIT and Eger Murphree and his team of engineers at Standard Oil of Newjersey (now Exxon). Murphree and his team demonstrated that hundreds of tons of fine catalyst could be continuously moved like a fluid between the cracking reactor and a separate vessel for... 

The moving bed-type process that eventually won" was fluid catalytic cracking (FCC). The early developments for this process were accomplished by Standard (New Jersey). Work with fixed-bed reactors during the late 1930s convinced E. V. Murphree, vice-president in charge of development, to conclude that the only viable approach was to use circulating catalyst processing that would allow steady-state operations (4). He also made the decision to utilize a powdered catalyst (4). 

The four American scientists who invented fluid catalytic cracking, Donald Campbell, Homer Martin, Eger Murphree, and Charles Tyson, had to wait almost eight years, from December, 1940, to October, 1948, for their U.S. Patent No. 2,451,804 to be granted after filing it. 

Murphree, E. V., et al. (194S). Improved Fluid Process for Catalytic Cracking. Transactions of the American Institute of CheinicaJ Engineers 41 19-20. 

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