New Innovative Catalyst Allows Diesel Producers to Boost Production with No Capital Investment
BATON ROUGE, La., July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Albemarle Corporation, (NYSE: ALB), a global leader in creating innovative catalyst products and technologies, announced today that it will offer the NEBULA catalyst in hydrocracking and hydrotreating applications as part of the Hydroprocessing Alliance, the company's strategic alliance with UOP, a Honeywell company.
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NEBULA catalyst is an innovative material jointly discovered by ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company and co-developed with Albemarle that offers greater catalyst activity and can enhance diesel yield and quality in hydrocracking and hydrotreating applications. Researchers of the two companies were recognized by the American Chemical Society as "Heroes of Chemistry" for their work in the development of the NEBULA catalyst which was hailed as a unique and more environmentally sustainable catalyst for the production of cleaner diesel fuels. The Hydroprocessing Alliance will now offer the NEBULA catalyst for reloads and revamps of hydrocracking and hydrotreating units for fuels applications.
The NEBULA catalyst is a base-metal catalyst with higher activity than conventional hydrotreating catalysts. NEBULA's high hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) and hydrodearomatization (HDA) activities can debottleneck hydrocrackers that have limited hydrotreating activity. Additionally, NEBULA enables the production of ULSD without additional capital investment and can enhance hydrotreating unit revamps to reach higher throughputs or achieve higher product quality standards. It has been used in more than 40 applications since its introduction in 2001.
"NEBULA's proven operational flexibility and superior performance are strong additions to the Alliance portfolio of cost effective solutions required in today's market," said Marc Nicolas, Director of Albemarle's Alliance activities. "In just three years Alliance efforts have resulted in the licensing of 61 hydrotreating units.
