Page 13 - Fluid Catalytic Cracking Handbook

Preface to the

Second Edition

The first edition of this book was published nearly five years ago.
The book was well received and the positive reviews were over-
whelming. My main objective of writing this second edition is to
provide a practical "transfer of experience" to the readers of the
knowledge that I have gained in more than 20 years of dealing with
various aspects of the cat cracking process.
This second edition fulfills my goal of discussing issues related to
the FCC process and provides practical and proven recommendations
to improve the performance and reliability of the FCCU operations.
The new chapter (Chapter 9) offers several "no-to-low" cost modifica-
tions that, once implemented., will allow debottlenecking and optimiza-
tion of the cat cracker.
I am proud of this second edition. For one, I received input/feedback
from our valued clients, industry "FCC gurus," as well as my colleagues
at RMS Engineering, Inc. Each chapter was reviewed carefully for
accuracy and completeness. In several areas, I have provided additional
discussions to cover different FCCU configurations and finally, both
the metric and English units have been used to make it easier for
readers who use the metric system.
Unfortunately, the future of developing new technologies for petro-
leum refining in general, and cat cracking in particular, is not promis-
ing. The large, multinational oil companies have just about abandoned
their refining R&D programs. The refining industry is shrinking
rapidly. There is no "farm system" to replace the current crop of
technology experts. In cat cracking, we begin to see convergence and
similarity in the number of offered technologies. Even the FCC
catalyst suppliers and technology licensers have been relatively quiet
in developing "breakthrough" technologies since the introduction of