Platinum Metals Review - Volume 3, Issue 1, 1959

By the end of the first world war the manufacture of nitric acid by ammonia oxidation over a platinum catalyst was a technically established process. The rapid increase in production of synthetic ammonia enabled this method to become the principal source of industrial nitric acid, and further development of the process in terms both of technical progress and in the size of unit plant has been determined by economic factors.

The Phillips Petroleum Company recently put on stream at Borger, Texas, industry’s first pentane isomerisation unit. This installation, employing Universal Oil Products Company’s Penex Process based upon a platinum-bearing catalyst, is unusually large for an initial unit but has given every indication of providing a very economical and efficient process.