Energy & Fuels, Vol.20, No.1, 7-10, 2006
Process design and solvent recycle for the supercritical Fischer-Tropsch synthesis
A recycle reactor system for supercritical Fischer-Tropsch synthesis was successfully designed and tested. The new reactor system has these characteristics: (1) integration of supercritical Fischer-Tropsch reactions, natural separation of produced wax from liquid phase, and recycle of the solvent and (2) natural recycle of solvent driven by self-gravity. A 20% CO/SiO2 Catalyst and n-hexane were used as a catalyst and supercritical fluid, respectively. The results show that the average CO conversion at the steady state was 45% with recycle and 58% without recycle. The lumped hydrocarbon products distribution did not have any obvious difference between with and without recycle operation; however, alpha-olefin content of products with recycle was lower than that without recycle. The XRD result indicates that most of the reduced cobalt remains in the metallic state during the Fischer-Tropsch reactions for both cases.