Petrochemical processing silica-alumina

Catalysis and reaction engineering became entwined in the late 1930s with the realization that the cracking of petroleum could be achieved most effectively using silica-alumina catalysts. With time, the connection between these two areas grew stronger as more and more catalytic processes were developed for the refining of petroleum, the production of petrochemicals, and the synthesis of polymers. 

The most common catalysts used in plastic cracking are acidic solids, mainly alumina, amorphous silica-alumina and zeolites. These materials are the catalysts typically used in the petroleum processing and petrochemical industries. They have very different textural and acid properties, which directly determine their catalytic activity and product selectivity. Thus, while the acidity of alumina is of Lewis type, both Brdnsted and Lewis acid sites may be present in amorphous silica-alumina and zeolites. This is an important factor because... 

Fixed Bed Catalysts. Noble metal, base metal, and other types of catalysts, including alumina, silica, resins, clays, zeolites, and combinations thereof are used in almost every type of chemical and petrochemical business segment. There are many different process applications ranging from the generation of suitable feedstocks, actual chemical reactions, and purification of products to the treatment of by-product streams. 

Purification of aliphatics by the removal of aromatics is important in the petrochemical industry as well as for pollution control. In a typical benzene removal process, a combination of extraction and distillation is used (Meyers, 1986). Improvements by other processes have been considered, such as pervapora-tion (Hao et al., 1997), liquid membranes (Li, 1968 Li, 1971a and 1971b), and adsorption by temperature swing adsorption (TSA) in the liquid phase (Matz and Knaebel, 1990). In the work of Matz and Knaebel, commercially available sorbents were used silica gel, activated alumina, activated carbon, zeolite 13X,... 

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