User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox

The first commercial use of catalytic cracking occurred in 1915 when Almer M. McAfee of the Gulf Refining Company developed a batch process using aluminum chloride (a Friedel Crafts catalyst known since 1877) to catalytically crack heavy petroleum oils. However, the prohibitive cost of the catalyst prevented the widespread use of McAfee's process at that time.

In 1922, a French mechanical engineer named Eugene Jules Houdry and a French pharmacist named E.A. Prudhomme set up a laboratory near Paris to develop a catalytic process for converting lignite coal to gasoline. Supported by the French government, they built a small demonstration plant in 1929 that processed about 60 tons per day of lignite coal. The results indicated that the process was not economically viable and it was subsequently shutdown.

Houdry had found that Fuller's Earth, a clay mineral containing aluminosilicate (Al₂SiO₆), could convert oil derived from the lignite to gasoline. He then began to study the catalysis of petroleum oils and had some success in converting vaporized petroleum oil to gasoline. In 1930, the Vacuum Oil Company invited him to come to the United States and he moved his laboratory to Paulsboro, New Jersey.

In 1931, the Vacuum Oil Company merged with Standard Oil of New York (Socony) to form the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company. In 1933, a small Houdry process unit processing 200 barrels per day (32,000 litres per day) of petroleum oil. Because of the economic depression of the early 1930's, Socony-Vacuum was no longer able to support Houdry's work and gave him permission to seek help elsewhere.

In 1933, Houdry and Socony-Vacuum joined with Sun Oil Company in developing the Houdry process. Three years later, in 1936, Socony-Vacuum converted an older thermal cracking unit in their Paulsboro refinery in New Jersey to a small demonstration unit using the Houdry process to catalytically crack 2,000 barrels per day (318,000 litres per day) of petroleum oil.

In 1937, Sun Oil began operation of a new Houdry unit processing 12,000 barrels per day (2,390,000 litres per day) in their Marcus Hook refinery in New Jersey. The Houdry process at that time used reactors with a fixed bed of catalyst and was a semi-batch operation involving multiple reactors with some of the reactors in operation while other reactors were in various stages of regenerating the catalyst. Motor-driven valves were used to switch the reactors between online operation and offline regeneration and a cycle timer managed the switching. Almost 50 percent of the cracked product was gasoline as compared with about 25 percent from the thermal cracking processes.

By 1938, when the Houdry process was publicly announced, Socony-Vacuum had eight additional units under construction. Licensing the process to other companies also began and by 1940 there were 14 Houdry units in operation processing 140,000 barrels per day (22,300,000 litres per day).

The next major step was to develop a continuous process rather than the semi-batch Houdry process. That step was implemented by advent of the moving-bed process known as the Thermafor Catalytic Cracking (TCC) process which used a bucket conveyor-elevator to move the catalyst from the regeneration kiln to the separate reactor section. A small demonstration TCC unit was built in Socony-Vacuum's Paulsboro refinery in 1941 and operated successfully. Then a full-scale commercial TCC unit processing 10,000 barrels per day (1,590,000 litres per day) began operation in 1943 at the Beaumont, Texas refinery of Magnolia Oil Company, an affiliate of Socony-Vacuum. By the end of World War II in 1945, the processing capacity of the TCC units in operation was about 300,000 barrels per day (47,700,000 litres per day).

It is said that the Houdry and TCC operating units were a major factor in the winning of World War II by supplying the high-octane gasoline needed by the air forces of Great Britain and the United States.<ref name=OGJ>