TITLE: Evaluation of the Slurry Methanol Reactor.

AUTHOR: R. Shinnar.

INST.  AUTHOR: City Coll., New York. Dept. of Chemical Engineering.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  1984,  17p.

ABSTRACT:

 The Chem Systems slurry process is a three phase reactor in which catalyst is suspended in a nonactive liquid, which mainly acts as a heat transfer medium. The reactor is similar to the slurry reactor for Fischer Tropsch processes described by Koelbel. It allows very good temperature control, and continuous catalyst addition and removal. If the liquid is a solvent for methanol, it also allows higher conversions of the gas as the methanol is preferentially removed from the gas inside the reactor, and can be flashed from the solvent. We have tried to evaluate the potential advantage of a slurry reactor for methanol production. The conclusion derived is that the slurry reactor has higher investment cost due to the low volumetric space velocity. Reactor volume will be about 5 to 10 times larger than in a standard packed bed. If the syngas has a sufficient H sub 2/CO ratio then the use of the slurry reactor has no advantage that will compensate for the inherently higher cost. On the other hand, if the hydrogen content of the syngas is low (0.5:1 to 1.2:1) (as in most advanced gaifiers), then the slurry reactor has the potential to eliminate the external shift and reduce steam requirements. This potential could lead to significant savings. There is a possibility that, with a proper catalyst, similar results of integrating the shift into the reactor could be achieved in a fixed bed reactor. Even then the slurry reactor would have the advantage of being able to use water instead of steam. It might therefore be advisable that development of a slurry reactor for methanol should focus on converting syngas with a low H sub 2/CO ratio without prior shift by water injection into the reactor. (ERA citation 09:009546)

REPORT  NUMBER: DOE/PC/30276-T1

CONTRACT  NUMBER: FG22-80PC30276