Catalysts

Making the most of rapid reactions

From plastic bottles to shampoo, many products we take for granted would not be affordable without catalysts to enhance the speed and efficiency of the chemical reactions necessary to make them. Today catalysts are employed in more than 80% of all refining and petrochemical processes.

At Shell, catalysts play a key role in everything from our quest to unlock new sources of energy to our decades-old drive to improve everyday industrial processes. Take, for instance, the catalyst Shell developed to improve the efficiency of converting heavy grades of oil into useful products. In the process of refining crude oil, a thick residue is left over. The heavier the oil, the more residue there is. Until recently it was blended into low-value products like marine fuel, or required difficult and costly processing.

However, as the volume of heavy oil coming from places like Canada’s oil sands increases, Shell has recognised the need for a cost-effective way to break down heavy feedstocks into lighter petroleum products. Shell’s new catalyst – small green pellets of aluminium oxide that are typically impregnated with nickel, molybdenum and other metals – provided the solution. By modifying tiny pores in the aluminium oxide, Shell scientists made the catalyst more efficient. For instance, it can process up to 35% more of the heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands than the catalyst used five years ago.

Other Shell catalysts have steadily improved the production of ethylene oxide, an important building block for synthetic fabric, plastic bottles and anti-freeze. Today up to 90% of ethylene is converted into ethylene oxide when it is combined with oxygen at high temperature – compared to about 80% with the previous generation of catalysts. More efficient ethylene oxide production saves the chemical industry hundreds of millions of dollars. There are environmental benefits, too, through lower carbon dioxide emissions.