UOP’s Refining History

UOP was founded on June 17, 1914 as the National Hydrocarbon Company. At the time, the company’s only offering was the Dubbs Process for thermal cracking of heavy hydrocarbons to gasoline. The Dubbs process proved highly successful, and was soon employed in more than 250 units operating in the United States and 18 foreign countries. These units helped provide gasoline to fuel the ever-increasing number of automobiles being built in the early 20th century.

UOP’s commitment to developing innovative and novel technology continued long after the Dubbs process became obsolete.

In 1933, UOP commercialized the first viable catalytic process for the polymerization of olefin gases to gasoline. Later, when World War II created increased demand for aviation gasoline, UOP responded with important advances in the areas of fluid catalytic cracking and liquid acid alkylation.

In 1949, UOP developed the Platforming process, the first process that utilized a catalyst promoted with a precious metal. The process was then commercialized for reforming of naphtha to produce high octane gasoline.

During the 1960s, UOP introduced paraffin isomerization processes to upgrade butane for alkylation feedstock and C₅/C₆ for gasoline blending. This era also witnessed UOP advances in the area of higher pressure hydroprocessing, both hydrotreating and hydrocracking.

During the 1970s, UOP commercialized the world’s first reduced crude desulfurization unit, and later developed the CCR Platforming process to meet the needs of unleaded gasoline.

UOP advances in the 1990s included the commercialization of oxygenate production technologies, including butane dehydrogenation units for on-purpose production of MTBE. Recent UOP developments include the ISAL process for the desulfurization of FCC gasoline for low sulfur gasoline production.

Throughout UOP’s history, our technical professionals have always worked to introduce new processes while supporting and improving our existing process portfolio. We have accomplished these parallel goals through innovative process advances and novel mechanical equipment. And perhaps, most importantly, we have achieved these advancements through innovations in catalytic materials that have allowed step-changes in the performance of reforming, isomerization, hydrotreating, and hydrocracking catalysts since their initial introduction.

Presently, UOP actively licenses more than 50 processes and supplies more than 90 different catalyst and adsorbents to the refining industry. Today, over 90 years after our company’s inception, we remain committed to helping the world’s refiners address the operating challenges they face on a daily basis.