Catalyst-Feedstock-Engineering Interactions in Fluid Catalytic Cracking

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Abstract
Fossil fuels, amassed over eons of geologic prehistory, are being irreversibly depleted about 106 times more rapidly than they were formed. With this sort of kinetics, there is little question that there exists, in the ultimate sense, an energy crisis [1–3]. That is, there will be fuel deficits for whatever time interval declining volumes of hydrocarbon reserves are not compensated for by increased supply from new energy sources such as nuclear, solar, and geothermal. In the interim period, the petroleum refiner is forced to utilize higher molecular weight, more hydrogen-deficient crudes, and crude fractions which have higher concentrations of impurities. Eventually, substantial quantities of “synthetic crudes” derived from coal, oil shale, tar sands, and bitumens may also become available.