A Comparison of Auto- Thermal and Conventional Synthesis Reactor

This study proposed a one-dimensional dynamic plug flow model to analyze and compare the performance of an auto-thermal and a conversional Fischer- Tropsch (FT) synthesis reactor. An auto-thermal two-stage industrial FT reactor type is a system with two catalyst beds instead of one single catalyst bed. In the first catalyst bed, the synthesis gas is partly converted to FT products in a water-cooled reactor. In the second bed which is a gas-cooled reactor, the reaction heat is used to preheat the feed gas to the first bed. To analyze the effect of important control variables on the reactor performance, steady state and dynamic simulations are utilized to investigate the effect of operating parameters on the performance of reactors. The simulation results show that there is a favorable profile of temperature along the two-stage auto-thermal reactor type in comparison with conventional single stage reactor type. In this way, it is supposed that the catalysts are exposed to less extreme temperatures and, catalyst deactivation via sintering is reduced. Overall, this study resulted in beneficial information about the performance of the reactor over catalyst life- time.

Keywords:

Auto- thermal reactor , Catalyst deactivation , Dual type reactor , Dynamic simulation , Fischer- Tropsch (FT) synthesis