Standard Oil Co. of Indiana

The authors wish to thank the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, the Humble Oil Co., and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers for permission to publish some of the data included in this paper. 

Recent comments by others indicate that this forecast does not single out Canada as unique. For instance, Frank C. Osment, President of the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, made these points during a recent speech before the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (1). His comments relate to the next 20 years rather than 30 years ... 

Methanesulfonic acid [1, 666-667]. The reagent is no longer available from Standard Oil Co. of Indiana. Pennsalt Manufacturing Co. supplies 90% reagent and Fluka supplies > 99% reagent. 

Recent patent disclosures by the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana indicate that their process for the polymerization of ethylene is also a relatively low-pressure process, and the following process information is based on these disclosures. The polymerization process is a fixed-bed process employing a prereduced catalyst, ethylene pressures of 809-1,000 psi, and temperatures somewhat greater than 200°C. The metal oxides (such as nickel, cobalt, and molybdenum) can be supported on either charcoal or alumina, and materials such as lithium aluminum hydride, boron, alkali metals, and alkaline-earth hydrides may be used as promotors. Variations of this process are reported to produce polyethylene resins with densities from 0.94-0.97. 

This demand led William Burton, of Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, to commercialize the first thermal cracking process in 1913. This discovery launched the rapid development of several competitive thermal cracking designs. 

In 1938, the Jersey formed a consortium of eight companies, which was named the Catalytic Research Associates, or CRA, with a charter to develop a catalytic cracking process which would operate outside of Houdiy s patents. These initial eight companies included Jersey, M.W. Kellogg Co., Royal Dutch Shell, the Standard Oil Co. of Indiana, Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (today s BP), Universal Oil Products Co. (today s UOP), the Texas Corp. (which would become Texaco) and IG Farben (which was eventually dropped in 1940). Over 1000 professionals were employed to develop the FCC process during the course of time in which the CRA consortium was in existence. 

U. S. Army Research Office, Standard Oil Company of Indiana, The Eastman Kodak Company and the Fulbright-Hayes Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We also wish to thank Dr. J. C. Kauer of the duPont Co. for help with the cycloaddition reaction of 1-acetoxy-2,3-butadiene and acrylonitrile, and Dr. R. B. Bates for helpful discussions. 

It is important to begin producing this additive as soon as possible. This is because die discovery of something new is frequently made by two or more independent investigators at about the same time, and the first producer sets the standards and gets the markets. In 1969 four chemical companies Standard Oil Co. (Indiana), DuPont, Phillips Petroleum, and Montecatini-Edison, were all claiming to be the inventor of polypropylene. At that time, the U.S. Patent Office had still not decided who would get the U.S. patent, even though the work had been done over 10 years before.5 Finally in December 1971 Montecatini-Edison received the patent. 

The authors wish to acknowledge with thanks the assistance of W. L. Humphreys and J. D. Balka of the Whiting Research Laboratory, Standard Oil Co. (Indiana), Whiting, Ind. 

A second process employing complex as the catalyst carrier was independently developed by the Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) and by The Texas Co. In this process (19,20), liquid butane containing make-up aluminum chloride and recycled hydrogen chloride is bubbled upward through a bed of preformed liquid complex about 20 feet in depth. Because the aluminum chloride in the feed is effectively transferred to the complex, catalyst carry-over in the reactor effluent is low and no recovery tower is needed. 

The other commercialized pentane isomerization process is that of the Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) (20). This process differs from the Indiana-Texas butane process in that the aluminum chloride is introduced as a slurry directly to the reactor and that about 0.5% by volume of benzene is added continuously in the feed to suppress side reactions. Temperature, catalyst composition, space velocity, and hydrogen chloride concentration are generally similar to those in the corresponding butane process, but the reactor pressure is about 100 pounds lower. The Pan American Refining Co. operated the Indiana pentane isomerization process commercially during the last nine months of the war and produced about 400 barrels of isopentane per calendar day. 

Napththa Isomerization. The only commercial isomerization of light naphtha was carried out in two plants employing the isomate process developed by the Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) (20). In this process, a feed containing normal pentane and low octane number hexanes is converted to isopentane and to hexanes of higher octane number. Pentanes and hexanes in any ratio may be processed. By recycle of selected fractions of the product, concentrates of isopentane or of neohexane and diisopropyl can be obtained as the ultimate products. 

This volume comprises the papers presented at a symposium held at Dallas, Tex., in April 1956, which was sponsored by the Division of Chemical Literature and the Division of Petroleum Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. We are especially grateful for the help provided by D. P. Barnard, research coordinator, Standard Oil Co. (Indiana), and Cecil E. Boord, professor emeritus of Ohio State University, who reviewed the program during its formative stages, presided over the sessions, and enriched the discussions. Their assistance was particularly valuable because we accepted the invitation to arrange the symposium on the basis of our experience in organizing technical information rather than because of any special competence in the field of combustion. 

Figure 7. Growth of Whiting research laboratory, Standard Oil Co. (Indiana), 1890-1955. (Reproduced with permission from reference 8. Copyright 1962 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)...

In the early 1950s there was the quite contemporary discovery—in three different laboratories—of processes for the polymerization of ethene at low pressure using solid catalysts The catalyst used by the Standard Oil of Indiana was Mo(VI) oxide supported on aluminum oxide the one by Phyllips Petroleum was Cr(VI) oxide still supported on silica/alumina the catalyst studied by Ziegler and his co-workers at the Max Planck Institute at Miihlheim... 

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