[sammyg2]

New technology? hardly. We've been cracking heavier oil molecules to turn them into lighter gasoline and diesel for 50 years. Hydrocracker, coker, fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCC) and all units that work on this principle.
The only difference is they are using microwaves instead of conventional heaters. What they didn't explain is that it would take more energy to perform that process than they'd get out of it.
Oh, but electricity is free and magically appears, right? ignorant libs.
They claim a 90% conversion rate, big deal. That's easy on a small scale but impractical. It's more economically feasible to run a conventional high volume stream at a 70% conversion rate and recycle (rerun) the non-converted oil. It all gets converted, some of it just has to run through again as it gets mixed into the feed stream.
If we really wanted to boost the conversion rate higher it would be easy: more expensive platinum catalyst, slower feed rates, less efficiency.

Here's the SMART way to do it:
take the light ends (butanes, propanes, hydrogen) that are produced during the thermal and catalytic cracking process and BURN them in an environmentally controlled heater to heat the oil to crack it. That way the process is self-contained as long as you have a steady stream of oil.
Then strip off the uncracked oil in the fractionator and pump it back into the feed as a side-stream. It's already hot so it takes much less heat energy the second time and is more energy and thermally-efficient.

That's how the EXPERTS have been doing it since before we were born. But of course THEY had to figure it out themselves, they didn't have the stoopid gubmint giving them millions in gubmint research grants to discover something the private sector already knew.
Now if their little experiment could hit 98 or 99% conversion on a small scale and maintain high conversion rates at higher flow rates and lower reactor cycle times, then it would be worth looking into.