Hydrocracking

Hydrocracking is a petroleum refining process that combines catalytic cracking with hydrogenation, breaking heavy hydrocarbon molecules apart in the presence of hydrogen gas and a catalyst to produce lighter products such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel with fewer impurities than older cracking methods. Commercial hydrocracking processes were developed and introduced in the early 1960s, notably Chevron's Isocracking process, brought into commercial use to process heavier, lower-quality crude oil fractions that older cracking processes handled poorly. Hydrocracking became especially valuable as refiners needed to extract more valuable light products from increasingly heavy crude oil supplies, and it remains a major refining process today.