Friday 3 August 2012

Burton process

The Burton process is a thermal cracking process invented by William Merriam Burton and Robert Humphrey. The oil industry used it to double the production of gasoline in 1913. This thermal cracking process was patented on January 7, 1913 (Patent No. 1,049,667).

The first thermal cracking method, the Shukhov cracking process, was invented by Vladimir Shukhov (Patent of Russian empire No. 12926 on November 27, 1891).

In 1937 it was superseded by catalytic cracking.

It is still in use today to produce diesel.