Carbon-14 tracer studies of the secondary reactions in the cracking of hexadecane over zeolite catalysts

Results from cracking runs over zeolites using propylene tracer showed that incorporation of radioactivity into other products was not as large as when amorphous silica-alumina was used. (Bordley, J. L., Jr., Doctoral Thesis, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1972). The values for α, the ratio of the radioactivity of the products per unit volume to the radioactivity of the tracer per unit volume, were only about one-tenth of those for the corresponding products obtained when a standard amorphous silica-alumina (Davison No. 980) catalyst was used. Results from the runs using toluene tracer showed that almost all the radioactivity remained in the toluene on both types of catalysts. Values of α for toluene were as large or larger on the zeolite catalyst than on the standard silica-alumina catalyst