TITLE: Slurry-Phase Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis.

AUTHOR: M. F. Zarochak;   M. A. McDonald.

INST.  AUTHOR: Department of Energy, Pittsburgh, PA. Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center.

SPONSOR: Department of Energy, Washington, DC.

LANGUAGE: English

PUB.  TYPE: Technical Report

PUB.  COUNTRY: United States

SOURCE: Department of Energy [DE],  1986,  25p.

NTIS ORDER NO.: DE87011758/INW

NOTES: Indirect liquefaction contractors' conference, Monroeville, PA, USA, 2 Dec 1986.

ABSTRACT:

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis in the slurry phase has attracted attention in recent years due to its numerous advantages. Among these advantages are the ability of the liquid phase to handle the large heats of reaction and thereby control reaction temperature, the ability to handle low H sub 2 /CO ratio synthesis gas without needing a preliminary water-gas shift step, and the relatively low capital and operating costs for slurry systems. Slurry-phase work at PETC has focused on understanding effects of catalyst preparation and pretreatment, of reaction conditions (T, P, H sub 2 /CO), and of operating conditions (space velocity, methods of wax removal) on catalyst synthesis behavior (activity, selectivity, and maintenance of activity and selectivity). Better understanding of the effects of these factors on F-T synthesis leads to improvements in process technology. This work focuses on the effects of catalyst pretreatment on synthesis behavior. Developing an effective F-T catalyst pretreatment procedure is a problem limited almost exclusively to iron catalysts. This paper reports some recent results on the effects of pretreatment.  Synthesis runs were made using one of two different pretreatments given a potassium-promoted precipitated iron catalyst. Besides these reaction experiments, catalyst samples were periodically withdrawn from the stirred autoclave for characterization by means of Moessbauer spectroscopy. (ERA citation 12:036581)

REPORT  NUMBER: CONF-861288-1