recycle hydrogen gas compressor and the net production of hydrogen-rich gas from the reforming reactions is exported for use in the other refinery processes that consume hydrogen (such as hydrodesulfurization units and/or a hydrocracker unit). The liquid from the gas separator vessel is routed into a fractionating column commonly called a stabilizer. The overhead offgas product from the stabilizer contains the byproduct methane, ethane, propane and butane gases produced by the hydrocracking reactions as explained in the above discussion of the reaction chemistry of a catalytic reformer, and it may also contain some small amount of hydrogen. That offgas is routed to the refinery's central gas processing plant for removal and recovery of propane and butane. The residual gas after such processing becomes part of the refinery's fuel gas system. The bottoms product from the stabilizer is the high-octane liquid reformate that will become a component of the refinery's product gasoline. Reformate can be blended directly in the gasoline pool but often it is separated in two or more streams. A common refining scheme consists in fractionating the reformate in two streams, light and heavy reformate. The light reformate has lower octane and can be used as isomerization feedstock if this unit is available. The heavy reformate is high in octane and low in benzene, hence it is an excellent blending component for the gasoline pool. Benzene is often removed with a specific operation to reduce the content of benzene in the reformate as the finished gasoline has often an upper limit of benzene content (in the UE this is 1% volume). The benzene extracted can be marketed as feedstock for the chemical industry. Catalysts and mechanisms Most catalytic reforming catalysts contain platinum or rhenium on a silica or silica-alumina support base, and some contain both platinum and rhenium. Fresh catalyst is chlorided (chlorinated) prior to use. The noble metals (platinum and rhenium) are considered to be catalytic sites for the dehydrogenation reactions and the chlorinated alumina provides the acid sites needed for isomerization, cyclization and hydrocracking reactions. The biggest care has to be exercised during the chlorination. Indeed, if not chlorinated (or insufficiently chlorinated) the platinum and rhenium in the catalyst would be reduced almost immediately to metallic state by the hydrogen in the vapour phase. On the other hand, an excessive chlorination could depress excessively the activity of the catalyst. The activity (i.e., effectiveness) of the catalyst in