244 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1947 



Machine tools, industrial machinery, electrical equipment, heavy fuel 

 oil consuming equipment, all have had their speeds, loads, and re- 

 quirements for continuity of operation increased at a rapid pace. 

 The petroleum industry has conducted research successfully to fur- 

 nish petroleum products required to meet these demands. Complete 

 details on the many ramifications of the changes in the petroleum 

 industry's industrial requirements have no place in this review, but 

 the order of magnitude of changes has been of the same degree as that 

 depicted for automotive and aviation industries. 



NEW PROCESSES WHICH hEAI) TO NEW PRODUCTS 



In 1939 the writer was requested to present to the Refining Division 

 of the American Petroleum Institute a paper which attempted to 

 systematize and catalog the many new processes which were under 

 development at that time. This paper was somewhat whimsically 

 entitled "Petroleum-ization — 1940" - since it dealt with such previously 

 little-known or unused processes as dehydrogenation, isomerization, 

 polymerization, aromatization, alkylation, etc. The paper attempted 

 to place these various new processes on the checkerboard of petroleum 

 refining to determine which ones were competitive, which were com- 

 plementary, and which should be considered for use as various refinery 

 situations arose. Owing to the undeveloped state of some of these 

 processes at that time, a large amount of forecasting based on personal 

 opinion was woven into the pattern presented. However, subsequent 

 events, specifically the wai , forced the hasty commercialization of most 

 of these processes substantially along the lines predicted and since this 

 pattern is fundamental to our examination of new products it is 

 presented here. 



Definitions and descriptions. — A certain number of definitions and 

 descriptions will be useful in our study of the situation; and if these 

 definitions do not agree exactly with the organic textbook, it should be 

 remembered that they were drafted for "petroleum-ization" rather 

 than for the broad field of general organic chemistry. 



Catalyst. — A catalyst can be defined as a substance which, although 

 present during a chemical reaction, apparently does not enter into the 

 reaction but causes, by its presence, a change in the conditions under 

 which that reaction occurs. Thus catalytic reactions offer a pos- 

 sibility for product control by selective acceleration of certain reac- 

 tions which, in the opinion of many, is the most important phase of 

 this new refining technique. 



B-ydrogenation. — The hydrogenation process adds hydrogen to the 

 hydrocarbon molecule. Hydrogenation may be either nondestructive 

 or destructive. In the former, hydrogen is added to the molecule 



2 Proc. 20tli Ann. Meet. Amer. Petroleum Inst., vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 65-71, 1939. 



