Refining Technology

Oil refining is a highly specialized discipline, and refinery catalysts must be tailored to meet variations in crude oil and a refinery's product mix. We work closely with customers to help them find the most appropriate catalyst formulations for their particular needs.

Refinery feedstocks vary in quality from sweet to heavy crude oil. Sweet crude feedstocks are more expensive than heavy crude and have a greater proportion of high value petroleum products and a lower proportion of resid, which is generally the lowest value feedstock contained in crude oil. Although feedstocks with high resid content are less expensive than higher quality feedstocks, the processing of high resid feedstocks is more difficult due to their relatively high metal contamination and higher boiling points. Due to the rising prices of petroleum products, refiners have increased their efforts to maximize the yield from resid feedstocks. We have designed our product portfolio to help our customers increase the efficiency and yield of resid refining.

Our products also enable refiners to reduce emissions from their FCC units and reduce sulfur content in gasoline and diesel fuel. Our products can deliver 35-50% reduction in sulfur oxides emissions from a commercial FCC unit, and can generally achieve a reduction in nitrogen oxides emissions comparable to that obtained from other, capital-intensive alternatives available to a refinery.

We established ART to combine our technology with Chevron's in order to develop, market and sell hydroprocessing catalysts to customers from the petroleum refining industry worldwide.
We are a leading supplier of hydroprocessing catalysts, including fixed-bed, on-stream catalyst replacement (OCR®) and ebullating bed products, designed for processing feedstocks.

We also offer a full line of distillate catalysts used in processing ultra-low sulfur content gasoline and diesel fuel, including our SmART Catalyst System™ and ApART™ catalyst system, which are customized for individual refiners. These products are designed to help refiners meet their obligations to reduce sulfur content in their products.