With the advent of high –performance automotive engines requiring the continuous improvement in gasoline quality and in view of the nearly global ban on some octane boosters, increased octane has become a relevant issue for many refiners.

Such relevance is even more profoundly stressed when confronted with sulfur specifications requirements progressively more stringent that aim at the control of vehicle emissions, since most of the post-treatments designed for removing sulfur from gasoline inexorably also reduce its octane. 

The ACTION catalyst, of Fábrica Carioca de Catalisadores S.A. and Albemarle, is the ideal solution for refiners that aim at increasing octane with minimum gasoline production volume loss.

ACTION was developed with a new, high-stability zeolite technology that favors the isomerization reactions instead of the cracking one, enabling octane increase with minimum conversion of gasoline to LPG thus rendering possible increased octane-barrels. Another important advantage of this technology is that the isoparaffins that contribute to the octane gain are not affected by the naphtha hydrodesulfurization process, which means a sustainable octane gain for the refiner.