Honeywell’s UOP Celebrates 100 Years in Oil and Gas Industry
June marks 100 years in the oil and gas industry for UOP LLC, a Honeywell company. To celebrate the day of its centennial, company representatives helped ring the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Honeywell chairman and CEO Dave Cote was present at the event, which recognized the centennials of UOP as well as Honeywell Aerospace.
Founded in Chicago on June 17, 1914, UOP was created to commercialize the first conversion technology for upgrading crude oil, resulting in a four-fold increase in the amount of gasoline that could be derived from crude oil. This created the foundation for the modern oil refining industry just as mass production of automobiles began.
As a part of Honeywell’s Performance Materials and Technology business, UOP remains a leading provider of process technology, catalysts, adsorbents, equipment and consulting services to the petroleum refining, petrochemical and gas processing industries. Now, 31 of the 36 refining technologies in use worldwide employ UOP technologies. With more than 3,000 active patents, UOP created the processes that make more than 60 percent of the world’s gasoline, 67 percent of its paraxylene (a key building block for plastic resins, films and fibers) and nearly 90 percent of its biodegradable detergents. The company’s processes also are used to treat 40 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas so it can be safely transported.
“UOP has been and continues to be a driving force of innovation for the global petroleum and natural gas industries,” said Rajeev Gautam, president and CEO of UOP. “Our partnership with the world’s oil and gas companies has led to the development and commercialization of the technologies that have enabled our modern way of living.”
On Dec. 1, 2005, Honeywell completed the acquisition of the 50 percent interest in UOP LLC that was owned by Union Carbide Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Dow Chemical Co., giving Honeywell full ownership of UOP. Since then, UOP has been a fast-growing and integral part of Honeywell’s comprehensive portfolio of energy and energy efficiency solutions.
During the past 100 years, UOP breakthroughs include technologies to manufacture the chemical compounds that helped launch the modern petrochemicals industry, introducing the world to products made from plastic resins and films and synthetic fibers. UOP commercialized technologies to produce the first large-scale biodegradable detergents, produce lead-free gasoline and make possible the automobile catalytic converter.
UOP’s innovations continue today with process technologies to get more valuable products from every barrel of oil, to convert coal and natural gas into plastics and to convert bio-feedstocks such as algae into renewable fuels. The company also develops technologies to grow the availability of natural gas and treat it so it can be shipped around the world.
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