- Eugene Houdry
Eugene Houdry (
April 18 ,1892 -July 18 ,1962 ) was a Frenchmechanical engineer who inventedcatalytic cracking of petroleum feed stocks. He originally focused on usinglignite (brown coal) as a feedstock, but switched to using heavy liquidtar s after moving to the United States in 1930. Although others had experimented with catalysts for this purpose, they were stymied by the fact that the catalyst ceased to work after a time. Houdry diagnosed the nature of the problem and developed a method to regenerate the catalyst. The first Houdry unit was built atSun Oil 'sMarcus Hook, PA oil refinery in 1937. Many more units were built by the 1940s and were instrumental for US wartimeaviation gasoline production.The process was further developed by two
MIT engineers,Warren K. Lewis andEdwin R. Gilliland , under contract to Standard Oil of New Jersey, nowExxonMobil . They developed the process intofluid catalytic cracking , which solved the problem of having to shut down the process to burn the coke off the catalyst by using a continuously circulating fluidized catalyst made of a finezeolite powder. This process is still in widespread use, especially in the US where gasoline is in high demand compared to other refined products.Houdry later became interested in automotive catalysts, and the
catalytic converter was one of approximately 100patent s that he received. but nothing came of it until the 1970s because thetetraethyl lead that was still in use in the 1950s and 1960s poisoned the catalyst.External links
* [http://www.chemheritage.org/classroom/chemach/petroleum/houdry.html Bio]
* [http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/82.html Another bio]
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