Refinery Catalyst Market Analysis

Refinery Catalyst Market Analysis

Refinery catalyst market is bifurcated into FCC (fluid catalytic cracking); hydroprocessing including hydrotreating and hydrocracking; reforming & isomerization; alkylation; and other types such as desulfurization, etc. Hydroprocessing segment, dominated by hydrotreating catalysts, will witness growth by CAGR close to 5% from 2019 to 2025. Hydrotreating removes sulfur, nitrogen, olefins, aromatics, and other contaminants from distilled crude oil fractions and intermediate process streams.

FCC segment will hold sway the market with around 70% of the global refinery catalyst market in 2018. FCC is a chemical process which utilizes a catalyst, mainly zeolite, along with heat to break the higher molecular weight hydrocarbons with long carbon chains into lighter hydrocarbons.

The different materials used in refinery catalyst include metals, zeolite, chemical compounds, and other specialty materials such as enzymes, organometals, etc. Zeolite based products in refinery catalyst market registered a revenue over USD 1.5 billion in 2018 as it is the most popularly used product in FCC units around the world. Generally, type Y zeolites are employed as refinery catalysts as they are significantly more reactive than other conventional products.

Chemical compounds accounted for a refinery catalyst market value of over than USD 25 million and they represent a very small segment of the overall market. Low price of these chemicals make them suitable options for petroleum refining, especially for alkylation processes.

Asia Pacific accounted for more than 40% share of the global refinery catalyst market in 2018 due to the large crude oil refining plants in China, India, Japan, and South Korea. The region is also the demand center of most of the petroleum fuels owing to large number of vehicle population in these countries. The region will also witness the fastest growth across the globe due to the upgradation and capacity expansions of refineries in India and China. . The world’s largest refinery complex of Reliance Industry is situated India with an annual capacity of 60 MMTPA. The refineries in this region are now upgrading and becoming more complex in order to extract light distillates from harder residues in order to increase their profit margins.
 

North America refinery catalyst market generated more than USD 800 million in 2018 with the U.S. accounting for a little less than 20% of the global demand. The country has the highest crude refining capacity in the world with over 140 operational refineries and capacity of close to 20 million barrels per day.