Growth of Platinum Reforming in Western Europe MEETING THE DEMAND FOR HIGH-OCTANE FUELS AND AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS

whereas American industry has available large supplies of natural gas; the refiner in the U.S.A. can therefore produce high quality fuels partly by catalytic cracking of heavy distillates, but his European counterpart has no such opportunity and must rely to a much greater extent on catalytic reforming processes to produce high quality fuels from straightrun naphthas. Again, while demand for high-octane gasolines has increased significantly, the growth in demand for aromatic hydrocarbons in Western Europe has been phenomenal. Until fairly recently the coal industry in Europe was able to meet this demand, but this situation has changed materially and it has become an obvious move on the part of oil refiners to install capacity for the separation of benzene and other aromatics from platinum reformates by fractional or extractive distillation. Today something between 30 and 40 per cent of the organic chemicals produced in Western Europe are derived from petroleum and the proportion is increasing rapidly. By the beginning of the present year the number of platinum reforming plants in Western Europe had grown to sixty-three, with a capacity of 27.4 million metric tons per year. In fact nearly two-thirds of existing Western European oil refineries have a catalytic reforming unit in operation. These respect. Consumption of fuel oil is very high, reforming plants are located in cvery country of Europe with the exception of Luxembourg,