History and Patents
The thermal cracking method (also known as "Shukhov cracking process") was invented by Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov and patented in 1891 in the Russian empire, patent no. 12926, November 27, 1891. This process was modified by the American engineer William Merriam Burton and patented as U.S. patent 1,049,667 on June 8, 1908.
In 1924, the delegation of the American "Sinclair Oil Corporation" visited Shukhov. Sinclair Oil protested the personal right appropriated by the Rockefeller "Standard Oil" concern on the discovery of oil cracking. It indicated that Burton's patent used by the "Standard Oil" concern was a modification of Shukhov's patent. Shukhov proved to the Americans that the Burton's method was just the slightly changed modification of his 1891 patents. An agreement between the American companies was made not to buy the patent from the Soviet Union.
Steam cracker units are facilities in which a feedstock such as naphtha, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), ethane, propane or butane is thermally cracked through the use of steam in a bank of pyrolysis furnaces to produce lighter hydrocarbons. The products obtained depend on the composition of the feed, the hydrocarbon-to-steam ratio, and on the cracking temperature and furnace residence time.
Read more about this topic: Cracking (chemistry)
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