Energy & Fuels 1997, 11, 1107
1107
Book Review Deactivation and Testing of Hydrocarbon-Processing Catalysts. Edited by Paul O’Connor, Toru Takatsuka, and Geoffrey L. Woolery. ACS Symposium Series 634. American Chemical Society: Washington, D.C., 1996. $124.95. This book is a collection of papers developed from a symposium sponsored by the Division of Petroleum Chemistry, Inc., at the 210th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in August 1995. It contains 28 papers from the symposium plus an additional 3 papers that were solicited for this volume. The book is organized into seven sections. There are three papers on criteria for catalyst testing, five papers on catalyst deactivation by coke, four papers on deactivation of fluid catalytic cracking catalysts, two papers on deactivation of reforming catalysts, four papers on deactivation of hydroprocessing catalysts, eleven papers on testing of catalyst performance, and two papers on modeling of catalyst performance. The overview provides three papers on the philosophy of catalyst testing, the engineering criteria for testing catalysts in a fixed-bed reactor, and a description of the pore structure and morphology of hydrocarbon-conversion catalysts. This section includes practical considerations of catalyst-particle size and reactor diameters needed for good testing of both gas and liquid feeds. The papers on catalyst deactivation by coke focused on the structure of coke on catalyst particles. This included both intracrystalline and external coke formation. Intracrystalline coke was studied by both NMR and massspectrometry methods. Data showed that this coke form was highly aromatic and that its form was limited by the types of micropores where the coke formed. Deactivation of fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalysts is examined from the standpoint of reversible deactivation by coke formation and irreversible deactivation by metals addition from heavy oil feedstocks. Reversible deactivation is consid-
S0887-0624(97)00021-2 CCC: $14.00
ered in one paper as a side reaction in the chain process of catalytic cracking. Irreversible deactivation is considered in the other three papers with a focus on laboratory tests which reflect observations made in commercial practice. Data is presented showing the trends of commercial experience. Deactivation of reforming catalysts is examined in two papers. The first discusses adiabatic prereforming as a first step in syngas manufacture; the second examines start-up factors which affect the performance of naphtha reforming catalysts. The section on deactivation of hydroprocessing catalysts includes four papers running the range from naphtha aromatization to residue HDS and deactivation during hydrodemetallization. Testing of catalyst performance focuses on the same petroleum refining processes that were discussed in the deactivation section. These include descriptions of several testing units and protocols for evaluating fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalysts, testing FCC catalyst regenerability, coke selectivity, and metals tolerance. Other papers in the section consider testing of naphtha aromatization catalysts and trickle-bed hydrotreating catalyst testing. The last two papers look at modeling catalytic reactions using benzene hydrogenation and heavy oil desulfurization as examples. I personally found this collection of papers very interesting. I especially liked the discussion of criteria for evaluating catalysts in fixed-bed reactors and believe that this paper alone is worth the price of the volume. My own background in FCC catalysts leads me to believe that the papers assembled here provide a good overview of the current state of the art in fluidized catalytic cracking. I cannot speak authoritatively about hydrotreating, but I do observe that the editors have collected a large number of papers from well-known authors on this subject as well. Edwin L. Kugler, West Virginia University EF970021N S0887-0624(97)00021-2
© 1997 American Chemical Society
