Hi everybody,
I am looking to work on FT synthesis, especially for low temperature conversion i.e. ambient conditions. Can anyone suggest the size and design of the lab-scale reactor for FT synthesis ( Fe-based catalyst)?
It would also be helpful for you to suggest me the composition of the catalyst for ambient conditions.
Hi
In one of my researches, I did this experiment in a bench scale reactor. Its link is as follows:
http://ejournal.undip.ac.id/index.php/bcrec/article/viewFile/5142/pdf
Dr. Sadighi
I can suggest to use a size and design very similar to your reference with the best performance with the same type of catalyst. You must to operate the reactor at the same spatial velocity or very near, in order to have comparable results.
Hi ,
to my knowledge, Fe catalysts are used at high temperature (around 300-350°C) in industiral condition even if low temperature Fe base catalyst are used in south Africa. .
Low temperature Fischer-Tropsch processes use mostly Cobalt based catalysts at around 220-240°C. I've never seen relevant publications with FT catalysts working at ambient temperature. Remember that main products of FT synthesis are waxes (very long chain hydrocarbons) which are solid at ambient temperature.
Dear Fabrice Diehl Thanks for your valuable suggestion, Yes you are right that Fe catalyst operates only at high temperature, I have some literature that suggest Titania based catalyst for the low temperature FT synthesis. But I don't know how Titania can be extracted from its ores/ raw material for catalyst preparation.
Hi
Effectively, the FT reactor must be designed to remove the large heat of reaction and maintain isothermal conditions within the catalyst bed.
You may maintain the isothermal conditions by circulating high pressure steam on the shell side. This could however be a tedious option for lab-scale reactor that are generally of small volumes (~100 - 200 ml). Hence you may also build a reactor with large L/d ratio for for maximum heat transfer and also simultaneously dilute the catalyst bed with inerts like SiC (thus reduce the fraction of reactive sites per unit volume).
Furthermore, if you are conducting FT experiments in the temperature range of 190 - 230 C, you are expected to get more wax. Under these circumstances, the superficial velocity has to be sufficiently large for the effective removal of waxes from the catalyst surface. Here again the L/d ratio plays a major role.
See the reactor configuration in the attachment. It was one of our initial lab scale reactor design that was radiatively heated in a cylindrical autoclave.
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