Industrial Organic Chemicals (Wittcoff/Organic Chemicals) || Industrial Catalysis

✍ Scribed by Wittcoff, Harold A.; Reuben, Bryan G.; Plotkin, Jeffrey S.

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Year: 2004
• Weight: 393 KB
• Edition: 2
• Category: Article
• ISBN: 0471443859
• DOI: 10.1002/0471651540.ch16

✦ Synopsis

Many of the organic chemicals discussed in the previous chapters were already being made before World War II. They were made by fermentation or from coal by "traditional" organic chemistry in batch processes. The advent of cheap olefinic feedstocks derived from oil and natural gas led to a switch to "hot tube" industrial organic chemistry, that is, to continuous processes that produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of product per year. The basis for this modern organic chemistry is frequently the "appropriate" catalyst, whose exact nature and formulation is often a closely guarded industrial secret.

In 1966, when catalyst theory was in its infancy, it was estimated that 70% of industrial processes involved catalysis. The percentage is now said to have reached 90%. Catalysis was said in 1999 to be used in the manufacture of more than $3 trillion worth of goods and services. Annual royalties and fees from technology process licensing exceeded $3.5 billion and the global merchant market for catalyst products approached $8.5 billion. About 30% of the US gross national product is generated with the help of catalysis. This chapter is therefore devoted to a brief review of catalyst technology with emphasis on ways in which the concept of a catalyst has changed and on recent trends in the industry. First, we shall discuss the questions of catalyst choice, and second, some of the chemical engineering aspects of catalyst use. Third, comes the markets for catalysts and then a discussion of the different types of catalysts encountered in industry. Table 16.1 shows a summary of catalytic reactions.