New heavy oil cracking catalyst

Spanish scientists have recently developed a new type of catalyst that can more effectively crack heavy oil into small molecules of fuel oil and chemical raw materials.
After the lighter components of crude oil are extracted, some of the heavier hydrocarbons that contain more than a dozen or more carbon atoms per molecule remain. In order to obtain from them fuel and chemical raw materials containing only 2 to 3 carbon atoms per molecule, the heavy oil needs to be cracked. The zeolite catalyst currently widely used for cracking heavy oils is an aqueous alkali metal aluminosilicate. There are regularly arranged pores suitable for cracking reactions. Hydrocarbon molecules can enter into them and can be strongly acidic. The environment is cracked. However, the width of the channel into the hole is only 0.74 nm, which limits its catalytic effect.
The new zeolite catalyst synthesized by Spanish scientists is similar to the traditional zeolite catalyst, but the number of channels per hole has increased from 4 to 6. Preliminary tests have shown that this new material, known as "ITQ-21," has better catalytic performance than faujasite, and that the cracked product contains more octane and the fuel is of higher quality.