TITLE: Experimental Study of Multiple Steady States in an Adiabatic Coal Liquefaction Reactor. Final Report.

AUTHOR: S. Bhattacharjee;   M. McMahon;   Y. T. Shah;   J. W. Tierney.

INST.  AUTHOR: Pittsburgh Univ., PA. Dept. of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  Aug 83,  52p.

ABSTRACT:

Many industrially important three phase hydroprocessing reactions are highly exothermic. The rational design of any three phase slurry reactor requires fundamental understanding of its thermal behavior. In the first phase of this project an adiabatic CSTR slurry reactor was designed, constructed and operated at the Gulf Research and Development laboratories. Ignition and quench were demonstrated for coal liquefaction.  Under normal feed conditions for SRC-II operation, repeated ignition and quench behavior were demonstrated. No stable steady state was found in the vicinity of 450 exp 0 C (and below 475 exp 0 C). Ignition occurred at a feed temperature of about 415 exp 0 C. The low steady states observed occurred at conditions of no heat generation, presumably at low or no reaction of hydrogen. Some evidence of a preheater effect on reactor ignition was indicated but not systematically studied. Data on the first phase of the project indicated that a small scale batch reactor can be made to operate in an adiabatic mode by using proper compensation for heat losses. However, a major difficulty with the reactor was the long time to reach steady state. In the second phase of this project a modified version of the reactor was designed and built in the laboratories of the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department of the University of Pittsburgh. This reactor shows a significant improvement in the degree of adiabaticity achieved and is more versatile. It can be used to measure the heat effects for complex hydroprocessing reactions. Fischer-Tropsch reaction was used as a case study and, in preliminary test, operation values for thermal requirements were found to agree with calculated values. 12 references, 21 figures, 6 tables. (ERA citation 09:015789)

REPORT  NUMBER: DOE/PC/30243-T6

CONTRACT  NUMBER: FG22-80PC30243