Thermal Cracking

Thermal cracking is a petroleum refining process that breaks large, heavy hydrocarbon molecules into smaller, lighter ones by heating them under pressure, without a catalyst, increasing the yield of gasoline obtainable from a barrel of crude oil. American engineer William Merriam Burton, working for Standard Oil of Indiana, developed a practical batch thermal cracking process, patented in 1912 and put into commercial operation in 1913, which came to be known as the Burton process and roughly doubled the gasoline yield from crude oil compared with simple distillation. Thermal cracking was the dominant cracking technology in the petroleum industry until catalytic cracking processes, which use a catalyst to achieve better yields and quality, began replacing it from the late 1930s onward.