The first catalytic cracking process was developed as a batch process (McAfee, 1915) shortly after the development of a thermal cracking process. The process used Lewis acid catalysts (e.g., AlCl3) for cracking. These catalysts were expensive and corrosive. In addition to these impediments, use of a batch reactor in the McAfee process did not allow large-scale commercialization of this process. The first full-scale commercial process, the Houdry Catalytic Cracking, used much less expensive catalysts, such as clays, and natural alumina and silica particles. Figure 7.5 shows the configuration of the Houdry Catalytic Cracking process. For cracking, gas oil feed was heated to 800°F and fed to a fixed-bed reactor packed with the catalyst particles. Cracking products are sent to a fractionator to be separated into gas, gasoline, light cycle oil (LCO) and heavy cycle oil (HCO) products.

Figure 7.5. Houdry catalytic cracking process configuration.

A series of swing reactors were needed to switch the feed flow from one reactor to another after approximately 10 minutes of operation. The switch to a swing reactor was necessary because of rapid coking on catalysts which, being natural materials, had a wide range of activity. Rapid coking on silica/alumina particles deactivated these catalysts and led to plugging of the reactors. After the flow was switched to another reactor, the isolated reactor was stripped with steam for five minutes to remove the liquid products adsorbed on catalyst particles. After stripping with steam, the deactivated catalysts were regenerated by burning off the coke on catalysts with hot air introduced to the reactor. Catalyst regeneration also takes approximately 5 minutes before the reactor with regenerated catalyst is ready to accept the feed again. By this time, the second reactor would be ready for the 10-minute cycle of steam stripping and catalyst regeneration. Having a third reactor in the plant would help deal with any delays/problems in reactor preparation. Considering that catalytic cracking is an endothermic process, the heat generated from burning the coke off the catalyst could be used partially to heat the catalyst particles for the endothermic reaction. A large portion of the heat in the flue gases from coke combustion was not available for the process. Therefore, the thermal efficiency of the Houdry Process was low.