ABSTRACT
Catalytic cracking is the most important and widely used refinery process for converting heavy oils into more valuable gasoline and lighter products, with 10.6 MMBPD (over 1 million tons/day) of oil processed in the world [1]. In the United States today, fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) naphtha provides 35 to 45% of the blending stocks in refinery gasoline blending pools. Originally, cracking was accomplished thermally, but the catalytic process has almost completely replaced thermal cracking because more gasoline, having a higher octane and less heavy fuel oils and light gases, is produced [2]. The light gases produced by catalytic cracking contain more olefins than those produced by thermal cracking (Table 6.1).
