Hacker News Reader

Comment by sdfx | Hacker News Reader

Can you point me to any books on this subject? Sounds like a fascinating story to dive into in more detail.

"zeolite" materials as catalysts are something you are exposed if you study materials science (my formal education). Also W.K. Lewis is a name you'll be exposed to if you dip a toe into chemical engineering. Zeolites and Lewis are central in the FCC story.

A little Googling produces their patent on this: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2451804A/en?oq=2%2c451%2...

A little more Googling of the ACS website produces a nice PDF historic summary of the Houdry process:

https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/education/whatischemi...

Not specifically about this topic, but "Oil & War: How the Deadly Struggle for Fuel in WWII Meant Victory or Defeat" is the most definitive account of the overall fuel supply factors that I am aware of.

That book probably covers the operation to get fuel across the Channel for the D Day invasions. I'm fairly sure Brenzett Aeronautical Museum had a section about it along with some pipe and equipment when I went a few years ago.

There were so many astonishing developments in the background to support the front end fighting which are so easily overlooked.

Thanks for the book info, I've flagged that to get at some point.

Many, many, many inventions: -Babbitt bearing alloys with indium -AL7075 -Quartz oscillators -Magnetrons -Vocoding, PCM, and FSK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com