Recent developments in slurry reactor technology at the Laporte alternative fuels development unit
- Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Allentown, PA (United States)
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (APCI) has progressed into the third year of a four-year Alternative Fuels program with the DOE. In the past two years, a number of new process technologies that convert coal-derived syngas to liquid fuels have been demonstrated at DOE`s Alternative Fuels Development Unit (AFDU), located at Laporte, Texas. The demonstrations required a scale-up of different technologies derived from bench-scale investigations of slurry-phase processes to a 22.5 inches (ID) diameter slurry bubble column. A single-step slurry-phase process for coproduction of dimethyl-ether (DME) and methanol, important fuels and chemical building-blocks, was demonstrated at the AFDU in 1991. Combining three reversible reactions - methanol synthesis, methanol dehydration and water-gas shift reactions in a single reactor drives each reaction thermodynamically by removing its inhibiting products as reactants in the subsequent reaction. Substantial increase in per-pass syngas conversion (by at least 30% at commercial space velocities) was demonstrated by mixing a small amount of dehydration catalyst with a methanol catalyst. A new slurry-phase, water gas shift process was demonstrated at the AFDU in the spring of 1992. Hydrogen generation via water-gas shift is important for complete conversion of coal-derived CO-rich syngas to liquid fuels. Slurry-phase Fischer-Tropsch technology was demonstrated at the AFDU in the summer of 1992. The 19-day run addressed scale-up issues such as catalyst activation, reactor performance and hydrodynamics. Stable catalyst productivity, expected hydrodynamic behavior and isothermal reactor operation were obtained, and correlation between laboratory autoclave and AFDU bubble column data was excellent.
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC22-91PC90018
- OSTI ID:
- 45089
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-930413--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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