With the outbreak of World War II, the petroleum refinery processes had to accommodation for the increasing need for high octane gasoline to fuel the war effort. The petroleum industry turned to catalytic refining to supply the fuel to run the more powerful spark ignition engines. The catalytic processes quickly evolved from the McAfee Batch reactor in 1915, to the Houdry fixed-bed reactor in 1936, to the TCC moving-bed reactor, and finally the FCC fluidized-bed reactor up until the 1970s. Since the main goal of petroleum refinery was to produce gasoline for the war the technologies were rapidly changing to make as much high octane gasoline product as possible. As a result the refining infrastructure was changed forever.
At the end of World War II, in 1945, many of the US refineries were producing high octane gasoline and allowed for the domestic automobile infrastructure to change accommodating for more powerful engines. [1] This would explain the birth of the muscle car era in 1965 through 1973 where mid-sized cars were equipped with large V8 high performance gas guzzling engines. [2] Along with the muscle car, the age of tetra ethyl lead high octane gasoline came to an end after the gas price increases from embargo crisis, the EPA’s Clean Air Act (1970) employing more strict emission regulations, and the growing popularity of catalytic isomerization. [1,3] Catalytic isomerization, which was initially used to produce aviation fuel in WWII, but was now being used to convert low octane n-paraffins into branched i-paraffins via a vapor phase platinum-bearing alumina-chloride catalyst. This marked the end of the Century Refinery. [1] During this refinery era multiple process were introduced including catalytic cracking, catalytic reforming, alkylation, catalytic polymerization, delayed coking, deasphalting, visbreaking, and hydrotreating. With the increasing need to become energy independent and more energy efficient, the petroleum refinery changed again to utilize the heavy ends for cleaner fuels utilizing the processes developed during catalytic refining. Today, the fuel of the future is still unknown but one thing is for certain, if it wasn’t for the “gasoline boom” in World War II there would be no way of telling where the refining industry would be today.
Sources:
1. Self, F., Ekholm, E., & Bowers, K. (). The Age Of The Catalytic Refinery 1940-1970. Refining Overview- Part 2 Development of the Modern Refinery (). : .
2. The Muscle Car Era and Gas Guzzling Automobiles. (n.d.). HubPages. Retrieved July 30, 2014, from http://tylerdurden1.hubpages.com/hub/Tthe-end-of-the-muscle-car-era-did-not-end-gas-guzzling-automobiles
3. Air Pollution and the Clean Air Act. (n.d.). EPA. Retrieved July 30, 2014, from http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/