Dewaxing is a process that is carried out to remove wax, long chain paraffins, from a feedstock for production of candles, cosmetics purposes, petroleum jelly and other lubricating oils. There are to different types of dewaxing, one being solvent based and the other involves catalytic cracking of the compounds. Solvent based dewaxing involves refrigeration of the feedstock after it is mixed with the solvent. Depending on the desired production the temperature is set accordingly to allow for a range of lube oils produced based upon a pour point. The solvent/feedstock mixture are chilled to a certain temperature and ran through a rotary filter to allow for the separation of the wax from the feedstock. There are two main solvents used for solvent dewaxing, propane and methyl ethyl ketone (MEK). In most U.S. refineries methyl ethyl ketone is used over propane for its characteristic changes of the feedstock. MEK has a small difference between filtration temperatures and pour points of dewaxed oils, has a fast chilling rate, and although propane is slightly better still has good filtration rates.

Dewaxing is considered a separation process, but because Catalytic dewaxing involves breaking and making bonds it is usually referred to as a conversion process of n-paraffins.  Catalytic dewaxing is still considered dewaxing because of its ability to remove long chain n-paraffins. Contrary to solvent dewaxing, catalytic dewaxing uses a molecular sieve catalysts with a pore opening size small enough that iso- structures, such as i-paraffins, are unable to go through the sieves. The increase of i-paraffins that this causes helps to lower the pour point of the feedstock. When cracking a molecule it is important to supply hydrogen so the radical chains do not bond to the catalyst surface active sites inhibiting there use, also known as coking. Cracking n-paraffins can lead to the production of distillate fuels as a by-product, such as gasoline. Catalytic dewaxing produces lube base stock with a lower pour point and a in higher yield than that of a product from solvent dewaxing. Both dewaxing processes have low capital investments. Catalytic dewaxing is also useful for the production of both lube oil base stock and light distillates.