“…Fabuss et al, 1964;Ford, 1986;Dominé, 1989;Khorasheh and Gray, 1993a;1993b;Song et al, 1994;Jackson et al, 1995;Behar and Vandenbroucke, 1996). The thermal cracking of aliphatic hydrocarbons involves their conversion into lower molecular weight alkanes and alkenes, and with minor yields of aromatic compounds (Rice, 1931;1933;Voge and Good, 1949;Ford, 1986;Zhou et al, 1987;Bounaceur et al, 2002a) together with branched alkanes of higher molecular weight than the starting alkane.…”