A National Historic Chemical Landmark: The Houdry Process

The Houdry Process

Transforming Crude Oil Into Gasoline
The Houdry Process
Impact of the Houdry Invention
Eugene Jules Houdry
Further Reading

The first full-scale commercial catalytic cracker for the selective conversion of crude petroleum to gasoline went on stream at the Marcus Hook Refinery in 1937. Pioneered by Eugene Jules Houdry (1892-1962), the catalytic cracking of petroleum revolutionized the industry. The Houdry process conserved natural oil by doubling the amount of gasoline produced by other processes. It also greatly improved the gasoline octane rating, making possible todayås efficient, high-compression automobile engines. During World War II, the high-octane fuel shipped from Houdry plants played a critical role in the Allied victory. The Houdry laboratories in Linwood became the research and development center for this and subsequent Houdry inventions.

Transforming Crude Oil Into Gasoline
Commercial production of petroleum began in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. The internal combustion engine was developed soon after, and the first gasoline-fueled "horseless carriages" appeared on American streets in 1895. But since only wealthy people could afford them, there were probably no more than 8000 automobiles in the United States by the turn of the century.

Crude petroleum is a complex mixture of hydrocarbon molecules, compounds containing carbon, and hydrogen atoms. Initially, crude petroleum was separated by distillation into fractions distinguished by differences in their boiling points. Some higher-boiling fractions were used for lighting and some for lubrication, but for many years, little use was found for the gasoline component.

As the number of automobiles, trucks, and tractors increased, the demand for gasoline increased, and by 1910when there were 500,000 automobilesa gasoline shortage had developed. It occurred to a few perceptive inventors that it might be possible to produce additional gasoline from the unused, higher-boiling petroleum fractions. In 1913, Dr. William Burton of Standard Oil of Indiana introduced a thermal-cracking procedure that used high temperature and pressure to break down the larger, higher-boiling molecules into the smaller, lower-boiling molecules found in gasoline.

It was recognized that more efficient engine performance could be achieved from a fuel that had a higher "octane rating," the measure of a fuel's efficiency in a standard engine. The first significant increase in octane rating was obtained in 1923, when Standard Oil of Indiana, using a discovery of Thomas Midgley, Jr., of General Motors, added tetraethyl lead to gasoline.

In the early 1920s, the French engineer Eugene Jules Houdry began his search for a catalyst to produce gasoline from lignite. A catalyst is a substance that can increase the rate at which a chemical reaction occurs, without itself being changed. Because it has the potential to produce very selective results, such as the cracking of high-boiling petroleum fractions to gasoline, a catalyst can give a particular process a competitive advantage. In the 1920s, the science of catalysis was still in its infancy, and the business applications were limited to the hydrogenation of vegetable oils to make butter substitutes, the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to make ammonia for fertilizers and explosives, and the conversion of carbon monoxide to make methanol or hydrocarbons. The Gulf Oil Corporation had tried to replace the energy-intensive thermal cracking of the higher-boiling petroleum fractions with an aluminum chloride catalyst, but the results were not economically successful because the cost was too high.

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