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Mobil Research and Development Corporation of Princeton Princeton M Mobil's success has focused on developing industrial catalysts and commercializing innovative catalytic processes that turn more of a barrel of crude oil into hydrocarbon products such as gasoline, lubricants and petrochemicals. Mobil's search for better gasoline yields led to zeolite -- porous crystalline mineral with highly ordered structures used commercially as molecular sieves and ion exchange agents. Mobil's commitment to catalysis research dates back to the 1920s when the company established a state-of-the-art research laboratory in Paulsboro. In the early 1930s, the company brought French inventor Eugene Houdry to the laboratory and supported his pioneering work in catalytic cracking. His process yielded a little more gasoline than thermal cracking, but Houdry's catalyst - a common clay - produced gasoline of a higher octane. In the early 1940s, Mobil commercialized a moving bed process called Thermofor Catalytic Cracking (TCC) and a new synthetic catalyst, which provided high octane aviation fuel for the Allied air effort throughout World War II. With peacetime, Mobil expanded its research in catalysis, employing a group of physicists, mathematicians and scientists from the war effort. This group eventually generated a second wave of innovation in the field that impacted the industry. The search for better gasoline yields led the Mobil researchers to zeolites - porous crystalline minerals with highly ordered structures used commercially as molecular sieves and ion exchange agents. In 1962, Mobil researchers devised a unique process to manufacture Zeolite X, which had been developed by the Linde Co. Mobil used Zeolite X in the zeolite cracking catalyst which produced 40 percent more gasoline from a barrel of crude oil than was possible with the catalyst it replaced - the largest single advance in petroleum catalysis since the development of catalytic cracking. A national research council reported that zeolite cracking permitted a savings of more than 400 million barrels per year of oil, or more than $8 billion a year at $20 per barrel. Since 1963, Mobil has synthesized and patented 42 zeolites -- more than a third of all the synthetic zeolites in the world. The most important of these is ZSM-5, a zeolite with pore openings small enough to distinguish between molecules of different sizes and shapes. Since its discovery in the mid 1970's, Mobil has commercialized more than a dozen applications for ZSM-5 and it can be found in more than 100 reactors worldwide performing feats ranging from boosting the octane of gasoline to manufacturing chemical building blocks for polyester and converting methanol to gasoline - the first new synthetic fuels technology in more than 50 years. |
