The
Houndry Process
As
an avid participant in the sport of automobile racing, Eugene Houdry
was acutely aware of the importance of high-performance fuels for
successful machine performance. As a Frenchman, Houdry was also aware
of the growing need for gasoline in a country that was deficient in
its own petroleum resources.
In
1922, Houdry learned about an exceptional gasoline derived from
lignite that was being produced in a catalytic procedure by
E. A. Prudhomme, a pharmacist in Nice, France. Houdry visited Prudhomme
and persuaded him to move to Beauchamp, near Paris, where Houdry
and some of his business associates financed and set up a laboratory.
For the next few years, Houdry worked closely with Prudhomme and
others to develop a workable lignite-to-gasoline process.
Supported
by the French government, Houdry's syndicate built a demonstration
plant that processed 60 tons of lignite per day to produce oil and
gasoline. The plant started operations in June 1929, but the results
were disappointing and the process was not economically competitive.
The government subsidy was withdrawn, and the plant was shut down
in that same year.
During
the lignite-to-gasoline process, the solid lignite was initially
broken down by heat to produce viscous hydrocarbon oil and tarsthen
the oil was further converted by an added catalyst to produce lower-boiling
hydrocarbons similar to the gasoline fraction derived from petroleum.
Although much emphasis had been placed by others on nickel-containing
catalysts, Houdry discovered that a clay mineral named Fuller's
Earth, a naturally occurring aluminosilicate, could convert the
oil derived from lignite to a gasoline-like product. Working with
this knowledge, Houdry focused his attention on the application
of catalysis to petroleum processing.
In
1930, H. F. Sheets of the Vacuum Oil Company learned of Houdry's
promising results using a catalyst to convert vaporized petroleum
to gasoline, and invited him to come to the United States. After
a successful trial run, Houdry moved his laboratory and associates
from France to Paulsboro, New Jersey.
The
Houdry Process Corporation was founded in 1931, a joint venture
of Houdry with his associates at the Vacuum Oil Company. That same
year, Vacuum Oil merged with Standard Oil of New York to form the
Socony-Vacuum Oil Company (later Mobil Oil Corporation). In 1933,
a 200-barrel-per-day Houdry unit was put in operation. But the Great
Depression had weakened the oil business. Unable to finance Houdry's
work any further, Socony-Vacuum gave him permission to seek support
from other petroleum companies.
In
late 1933, Houdry met with Sun Oil Company (later Sun Company) president
J. Howard Pew and vice president for refining Arthur Pew, Jr. Shortly
thereafter, Houdry, Socony-Vacuum, and Sun signed a joint development
agreement. In the next few years, the Houdry process underwent further
changes, including an innovative method for regenerating the catalyst
after a short, ten-minute usage time.
 These
results inspired Socony-Vacuum and Sun to proceed to commercialization.
In April 1936, Socony-Vacuum converted an older thermal-cracking
unit in Paulsboro into a semi-works unit using the Houdry process.
In March 1937, Sun's new, fully commercial unit went into operation.
Processing 15,000 barrels of petroleum per day, this unit featured
such innovations as a molten-salt heat control technique and motor-operated
valves controlled by timers. Almost 50 percent of the product was
high-octane gasoline, compared with 25 percent from the more conventional
thermal processes.
When
Arthur Pew, Jr., presented the details of the successful commercial
process at a 1938 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, the
industry was astounded. An article in Fortune magazine, entitled
"Monsieur Houdry's Invention," said Pew "had dropped
a bombshell." In 1940, the first large-scale plant for producing
a synthetic silica-alumina catalyst began operations in Paulsboro.
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