News you can use: The Catalyst Review Newsletter

“You Don't Have To Be a Rocket Scientist ... To Think Like One” -- George (Pinky) Nelson, research astronomer and director of project 2061, a nationwide science, mathematics and technology initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He flew three space shuttle missions from 1978 to 1989 while a NASA astronaut

The Catalyst Review Newsletter (http://www.catalystgrp.com/catalystreview.html) contains both news about companies producing catalysts and full length articles on catalyst applications. Although desulfurization is not its focus, since catalysis lies at the heart of desulfurization technology, it is worth browsing for useful nuggets.

And occasionally it contains information targeting desulfurization specifically. For example, the May 2008 issue featured an article titled "Catalysts for Heavy Oil Conversion.”

Here are a couple of excerpts from the article …

“The choice of a catalyst-based process and the properties of the catalyst are determined to a great extent by the product distribution required. A particular feature of the hydroprocessing heavy oil, as compared with its alternatives, is its flexibility with respect to product production and the relatively high quality of the products. On the whole, hydroprocessing can handle a wider range of feedstock than catalytic cracking, although the latter process has seen some recent catalyst developments that narrowed the gap.

“However, proper selection of the types of catalysts to be employed in hydroprocessing heavy oil is essential if the process is to function efficiently. In this respect, mild hydrotreating (which is essentially hydrogen addition prior to conversion and which might be the first stage of the two-stage hydrocracking process, Figure 1) rather than immediate conversion of the heavy feedstock is often selected as a preliminary step prior to fluid catalytic cracking as a means of ultimately increasing conversion of heavy oil into lower boiling higher value products (Figure 2) (Speight, 2000, 2004)."
…
“It appears necessary to develop better analytical methods for the characterization of heavy feeds to be able to better predict the behavior of catalysts and catalytic reactors when processing such feeds.”
Source: The Catalyst Review Newsletter
Published by The Catalyst Group Resources (www.catalystgrp.com)


Desulfurization is the focus of this blog, but the same approach to assembling a system of sources and techniques applies to any field of technology. So the Desulfurization Blog may be of interest to you, even if desulfurization itself is not. Let your colleagues know about it.