Lessons from FCC history: through Covid and post economic recovery An updated and in-depth look at FCC catalyst history, spanning two decades, reveals trends pre-Covid, during Covid, and post the recent economic recovery
Jacqueline Pope Bates, Melissa Clough Mastry and Alexis Shackleford BASF
A previous publication explored 15 years’ worth of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) history. 1 Today, we update this to include two decades worth of history, inclu- sive of the impacts during the Covid-19 pandemic and, more recently, during the economic recovery of 2022. The data explored span different regions of the world, catalyst suppli- ers, FCC designs, and types of FCC unit operations. The current update reviews both catalyst properties and catalyst performance. Furthermore, regional trends within specific areas are explored. The regions are bro - ken into three parts of the globe: The Americas (which includes North and South America), Asia (excluding China), and EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), which also includes the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). The global average in all cases is also presented. To fur- ther add context to the data, upper and lower bands are included as a shaded area, representing the 90th and 10th percentiles, respectively. Trends A significant catalyst parameter in Figure 1 shows how the global average rare earth oxide (REO) content has fluc - tuated greatly over the past two decades. REO stabilises the Y-zeolite, where high REO gives higher catalyst activ- ity and selectivity to gasoline, and lower REO gives lower catalyst activity and higher light olefins such as propylene and higher gasoline octane. In 2011, there was a massive global shift to lower REO due to the REO crisis, in which the pricing of REO skyrocketed. REO levels slowly rebounded
but never to the peak from previous years, largely due to product economics favouring a more moderate level. Since 2017, we see a global trend towards decreasing REO content. This is due to product economics, suggesting that naphtha (a gasoline precursor) has slightly taken a back seat to other products, including LPG (liquefied petroleum gas). This is especially true in the Americas due to the drive from strong butylene pricing. The low REO trend was fur- ther exacerbated by the low gasoline demand during Covid years. Another interesting point this graph demonstrates is that all regions converged in terms of REO levels, rather than the trend over the first 15 years, with the Americas utilising higher REO catalysts than other regions. Figure 2 gives insights into catalyst surface areas. To offset the activity loss due to lower REO, we see a global trend of higher total surface area (TSA). This trend is
200
180
160
140
120
100
Global
Americas
Asia
EMEA
80
3
1 0.5 1.5 2.0 3.0 2.5 4.0 3.5 4.5
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
Global
Americas
Asia
EMEA
0
Global
Americas
Asia
EMEA
0
Figure 2 Global total surface area (top) and zeolite-to- matrix ratio (bottom) trends
Figure 1 Global rare earth oxide trend
37
Catalysis 2023
www.digitalrefining.com
Powered by FlippingBook