ABSTRACT
Catalytic cracking of gas oil or light vacuum gas oil has been a major refinery process for producing gasoline and diesel fuels. This chapter discusses the cracking of normal C6–C16 paraffins, and C6 and C12 cycloparaffins. The normal paraffins can be used as an indicator of utility of the catalysts for wax cracking and the cyclododecane as a measure of the ability of the catalysts to crack molecules which are larger than or close to the same size as the pore opening of conventional zeolites. A portion of the solid product was analyzed by X-ray powder diffraction using a Rigaku Geigerflex diffractometer attached with a graphite monochromator using CuKa radiation. The chapter presents the reaction conditions and the results of catalyst tests of n-paraffin cracking for the H-MCM-22s prepared at varying crystallization times and with different amounts of added seed crystals, and for a reference zeolite H-ZSM-5.
