Scale-up and Demonstration of Fischer-Tropsch Technology

More documents

Recommendations

Info

4 D. Schanke et al. membrane process where some hydrogen is removed and returned to the main GTL plant. The preheated and purified Syngas enters the FT reactor and into a slurry of finely divided, supported cobalt catalyst particles and molten wax. Light hydrocarbons, unconverted Syngas, inert gases and water vapor then leave the reactor via an overhead stream to the product recovery section, where they are separated into oil (C5+ hydrocarbons), aqueous phase and tail gas. The wax is separated from the slurry using a proprietary continuous internal filtration process. The Fischer-Tropsch reaction also produces a considerable amount of heat that is removed by the generation of steam in heat-exchanger tubes inside the reactor. The FT catalyst is loaded to the reactor via a separate system and catalyst can also be loaded or removed online during operation. The demonstration plant is fully integrated with the PetroSA main GTL complex regarding utilities (nitrogen, plant air, steam, cooling water and electricity) and product handling. The oil products are sent to the PetroSA product upgrading plant while the wax product is routed to separate storage. Sharing of these functions has significantly decreased the capital cost of the plant compared to a dedicated stand alone unit. Table 1. Key data for semi-commercial plant Production capacity Up to 1000 bpd Reactor diameter 2.7 m Syngas flow Up to 45.000 Nm 3 /h Total structure height 40 m Plot area 25 m x 30 m Total cost Ca. 40 mill Euro NATURAL GAS SYNGAS PRODUCTION Gas adjustment H 2 HIGH TEMP. F-T Semi- Commercial Demo Plant Liquids Wax PRODUCT REFINING Fig. 2. Integration of F-T demonstration plant with PetroSA GTL complex at Mossel Bay, South Africa.
Scale-up and demonstration of Fischer-Tropsch technology 5 Fig. 3. Semi-commercial FT demo plant (Mossel Bay, South Africa) 4. Catalyst production Scaling up production of the supported cobalt FT catalyst, while at the same time satisfying the strict requirements for use in a slurry reactor, is not a trivial task. Starting from laboratory recipes for preparation of catalyst at typically
Page 1 and 2: Proceedings of the 1 st Annual Gas
Page 3: Scale-up and demonstration of Fisch
Page 7 and 8: Scale-up and demonstration of Fisch

Scale-up and Demonstration of Fischer-Tropsch Technology

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?