Conversion enhancement of tubular fixed-bed reactor for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis using static mixer

Recently, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) has become an interesting technology because of its potential role in producing biofuels via Biomass-to-Liquids (BTL) processes. In Fischer-Tropsch (FT) section, biomass-derived syngas, mainly composed of a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H₂), is converted into various forms of hydrocarbon products over a catalyst at specified temperature and pressure. Fixed-bed reactors are typically used for these processes as conventional FT reactors. The fixed-bed or packed-bed type reactor has its drawbacks, which are heat transfer limitation, i.e. a hot spot problem involved highly exothermic characteristics of FT reaction, and mass transfer limitation due to the condensation of liquid hydrocarbon products occurred on catalyst surface. This work is initiated to develop a new chemical reactor design in which a better distribution of gaseous reactants and hydrocarbon products could be achieved, and led to higher throughput and conversion. The main goal of the research is the enhancement of a fixed-bed reactor, focusing on the application of Kenics™ static mixer insertion in the tubular packed-bed reactor. Two FTS experiments were carried out using two reactors i.e., with and without static mixer insertion within catalytic beds. The modeled syngas used was a mixed gas composed of H₂/CO in 2: 1 molar ratio that was fed at the rate of 30 mL(STP)-min–¹ (GHSV ≈ 136 mL. g_ca⁻¹.h⁻¹) into the fixed Ru supported aluminum catalyst bed of weight 13.3 g. The reaction was carried out at 180 °C and atmospheric pressure continuously for 36 h for both experiments. Both transient and steady-state conversions (in terms of time on stream) were reported. The results revealed that the steady-state CO conversion for the case using the static mixer was approximately 3.5 times higher than that of the case without static mixer. In both cases, the values of chain growth probability of hydrocarbon products (α) for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis were 0.92 and 0.89 for the case with and without static mixer, respectively.