Novel process to evaporate liquid fuels and its application to the catalytic partial oxidation of diesel

Abstract

A novel process for evaporation of liquid hydrocarbons, like gasoline, diesel or kerosene, has been developed and tested. It allows to directly transfer a liquid hydrocarbon mixture into the gaseous phase avoiding all problems related to residue and carbon formation due to contact of the fuel with hot heat exchanger surfaces. This process is especially advantageous when designing combustion or reforming systems for diesel, since this fuel can not be evaporated directly. By transferring diesel into the gaseous phase, thorough mixing of the hydrocarbons with steam and air is possible, reducing the risk of carbon formation in subsequent combustion or reforming processes. In Part I, this paper describes the evaporation process and presents first experimental results. A map will be given characterizing operating conditions where the evaporation is complete. Furthermore, the composition of the evaporator products were measured providing insight into the processes taking place in the evaporator. In Part II, the paper explains how the evaporator was connected to a catalytic partial oxidation reformer reactor and presents first experimental results with diesel which showed that at temperatures around 800 °C the thermodynamic equilibrium is reached and no carbon is formed in the evaporator nor in the CPOX reactor.