Comparative Study of the Performance of Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis in Conventional Packed Bed and in Membrane Reactor Over Iron- and Cobalt-Based Catalysts

Abstract

A comparative study of Fischer–Tropsch synthesis for synthesizing liquid hydrocarbons from syngas was carried out in a conventional packed bed reactor and in a water perm-selective membrane reactor over iron and cobalt catalysts. The process was performed under different operating conditions, such as inlet syngas feed molar ratio, total pressure, gas velocity, temperature, reactor dimensions and sweep fluid ratio. The main simulation results show that the use of the concept of membrane reactor can improve the process performance compared to that obtained in the case of the conventional packed bed reactor. Furthermore, under certain operating conditions, the process could be intensified by a reduction of carbon monoxide conversion magnitude via the water–gas shift reaction. This is possible by using a hydrophilic membrane. Our findings indicate that the membrane reactor provides a quasi-complete conversion of carbon monoxide over iron- or cobalt-based catalysts.