Reactor Fisher-Tropsch

The Fisher-Tropsch plants build in Germany before World War II and during World War II produced about 16,000 barrels (1 barrel = 0.159 m3) per day of liquid fuels from coal, employing a Co catalyst in fixed-bed reactors [5], However, during the 1950s, the Fisher-Tropsch process turned out to be uneconomical as a consequence of the abundant supply of crude oil. Nevertheless, currently considerable attention is being paid to develop alternatives of the Fisher-Tropsch process to generate liquid fuels from natural gas, biomass, oil sands, oil shales, and coal [134],... 

The most likely syngas consumers in the infrastructure are Fisher-Tropsch diesel processes, ammonia producers, methanol producers and the Direct Reduction of Iron (DRI) process. The H2/CO ratios required by these process range from >0.68. 4. Assuming that syngas is produced using entrained flow reactors with reformers, preliminary economic evaluation revealed that the HQ pipeline should provide syngas in a ratio bandwidth of 0.9-1.1. 

Troshko AA, Zdravistch F. CFD modeling of slurry bubble column reactors for Fisher-Tropsch synthesis. Chem. Eng. Sci. 2009 64 892-903. 

In fact, many of these advantages have been demonstrated already for the Fisher-Tropsch synthesis in slurry reactors compared to the classical fixed bed and entrained fluidized bed processes [97] ... 

Publications on successful application of realistic design models to commercial scale slurry processes are relatively scarce. Nevertheless, progress has been made, particularly in modelling slurry reactors for coal liquefaction, Fisher-Tropsch synthesis, methanol synthesis, oxydesulfurization of coal and selective hydrogenation where intermediates are the desired product. The result is encouraging, taking the lack of reliable mass transfer data at actual reactor conditions into account. 

Slurry reactors have a bright future. New applications can be expected in methanol synthesis, in combining the Fisher-Tropsch with the Mobil process, in hydrogen recovery from lean gas mixtures, in biochemical reaction engineering, in using activated carbon either to promote mass transfer in chemical reactors or to increase selectivity in separation processes, to mention a few. 

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