Recent Trends in Fluid Catalytic Cracking Patents, Part IV: Cracking Catalysts
Jul 16th, 2014 by William Reid | News | Recent News & Articles |
This is the fourth article in a review of recent patents in the area of Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC). The first article reviewed patents on catalyst additives, and demonstrated that relatively few patents had recently issued on FCC additives (e.g., gasoline sulfur reduction catalysts), likely reflecting the current use of gas oil hydrotreaters and naphtha hydrotreaters/desulphurizers, which reduce the need for such additives. The second article reviewed patents related to zeolites, and demonstrated that trends in this area reflected an emphasis on the mesoporosity of those zeolites. The third article reviewed patents on cyclones, and showed that patenting trends in this area appear to be primarily related to improvements in performance for conventional designs, consolidation of other reactor operations (stripping) to the cyclone, or design of separation systems usable in a variety of existing regenerator designs. The current article covers recent patents relating to cracking catalysts. There are relatively few of these patents, and not enough to designate any trends as a whole, although as mentioned previously there are patenting trends in the zeolite portion of the catalyst.