 |
| |
Competitive Catalysts for Chemistry |
|
|
Every car has a catalytic converter, and so has every power plant. Catalysts are also broadly used in many areas of the chemical industry - e.g. for chemical, petrochemical, and petroleum refining. In order to boost the performance of BASF catalysts business, a cross-divisional team of experts from research, process development, production, marketing and sales started to change the market - by changing the core structure of process catalysts for fluid cracking.
|
|
 |
|
High impact in smallest dimensions: BASF catalysts improve yields in petrochemical plants. |
If you think about catalysts, you start thinking in very small dimensions: roughly 70 µm is the typical size of so-called Fluid Cracking Catalysts (FCC) - which isn't much more than the diameter of a hair. In the past, BASF manufactured those FCC with two significant advantages: high activity and resistance to attrition. Their selectivity for by-products like coke and so-called dry gas on the other hand was only about equivalent to the competition. The activity advantage became crucial when FCC processes changed to "short contact time", which required catalysts much more active than before.
"We eventually realized that we had to change the catalyst's structure from the inside", reports the researcher Dr. David M. Stockwell. "There were subtle hints that the internal pore volume was limiting the activity of our catalysts. If true, this would lead to secondary reactions resulting in higher coke and dry gas fractions that would prevent the realization of the full benefits of our technology. Solving the problem could break the logjam of stiff competition in the industry that had resulted in stagnation of sales and profits for our catalyst business", says Stockwell.
|
 |
Stockwell and his team started their work by testing different methods for processing the raw materials for their catalysts. "We finally found a way to create an enhanced framework structure with a high pore volume - which at the same time allows for a much higher yield and significantly lower amount of secondary reactions. The effect of the new catalyst structure is amazing - the innovative Distributed Matrix Structure (DMS) in Fluid Cracking Catalysts (FCC) leads to significantly higher gasoline yields.
DMS is a unique BASF technology platform that allows the development of catalysts with a higher level of yield performance. Catalysts made with the DMS technology feature a unique structure combining optimized porosity with high activity. Petroleum feeds diffuse more effectively and pre-crack more efficiently on DMS catalysts than on traditional amorphous matrix FCC catalysts. This allows for a high bottoms conversion with low coke, and higher yields of gasoline and other liquid products. "DMS FCC catalysts can help refiners increase yields of gasoline, diesel, and other fuels by up to 1.2 volume percent across the entire refinery", says Stockwell. "This equals to up to 63,000 additional gallons of fuel per day for an average size refinery."
In the United States, DMS catalysts have already enabled BASF to reach number one in market share for the first time.
|
|
|
|
|
|
