UREP-7 Cycle

Project Description

Conducting FTS reactions in supercritical fluid (SCF) media has been demonstrated to have certain advantages over the traditional routes because of the unique characteristics of the supercritical phase (combines the desirable properties of gas-like diffusion along with liquid-like heat transfer and solubility to overcome many of the aforementioned limitations of the current industrial FTS reactors). There are several advantages of operating FTS in SCF media versus operation in conventional media (gas-phase and liquid-phase) : (1) in-situ extraction of heavy hydrocarbons from the catalyst pores resulting from high solubility in the supercritical phase, (2) elimination of interphase transport limitations thus promoting reaction pathways toward the desired products, (3) enhancement of α-olefins desorption that promote the chain growth process prior to secondary reactions, and (4) excellent heat transfer compared to gas-phase reaction that resulted in more long chain products. These advantages resulted in better selectivity towards middle distillate hydrocarbons (diesel fuel), lower selectivity of undesired products such as CH4 and CO2 and longer catalyst life time. Nevertheless, developing commercial scale SCF-FTS reactor require better understanding of the underlying kinetic, thermodynamic and reaction engineering issues besides building reactor configuration for such conditions.

The objectives of this project are to design an advanced reactor system to facilitate supercritical phase FTS operating conditions and to compare this new configuration to existing commercial FBR and SBR reactors. Figure below depicts the conventional FTS reactor configuration used in this study.