Kinetic Study Based on the Carbide Mechanism of a Co-Pt/γ-Al2O3 Fischer–Tropsch Catalyst Tested in a Laboratory-Scale Tubular Reactor

Abstract

A Co-Pt/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was manufactured and tested for Fischer–Tropsch applications. Catalyst kinetic experiments were performed using a tubular fixed-bed reactor system. The operative conditions were varied between 478 and 503 K, 15 and 30 bar, H2/CO molar ratio 1.06 and 2.11 at a carbon monoxide conversion level of about 10%. Several kinetic models were derived, and a carbide mechanism model was chosen, taking into account an increasing value of termination energy for α-olefins with increasing carbon numbers. In order to assess catalyst suitability for the determination of reaction kinetics and comparability to similar Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) applications, the catalyst was characterized with gas sorption analysis, temperature-programmed reduction (TPR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. The kinetic model developed is capable of describing the intrinsic behavior of the catalyst correctly. It accounts for the main deviations from the typical Anderson-Schulz-Flory distribution for Fischer–Tropsch products, with calculated activation energies and adsorption enthalpies in line with values available from the literature. The model suitably predicts the formation rates of methane and ethylene, as well as of the other α-olefins. Furthermore, it properly estimates high molecular weight n-paraffin formation up to carbon number C80.

Kinetics of Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis in a 3-D Printed Stainless Steel Microreactor Using Different Mesoporous Silica Supported Co-Ru Catalysts

“…They also proposed a pseudo-homogenous one-dimensional model to evaluate the kinetic performance of the catalyst and achieved less than 8% error with the predicted data for kinetic experiments [95]. More recently, Marchese et al, performed kinetic studies with Co-Pt/γ-Al 2 O 3 catalyst in a lab-scale tubular reactor and reported an error band around ± 25% with a confidence level of 0.95 stating it lies in the suitable acceptable limits with many mechanistic models proposed in the literature [89,[96][97][98].…”

A Circular Approach for Making Fischer–Tropsch E-fuels and E-chemicals From Biogas Plants in Europe

“…For both biogas-derived CO 2 and digestate, economic considerations were accounted for the production of FT waxes (Marchese, 2021). For all the analyzed processes, the production of FT compounds is described by a mechanistic kinetic model validated with experimental results (Marchese et al, 2019). Figure 4 provides the schematics of the process models taken into consideration for the evaluation of the FT production potential throughout Europe.…”

Economic appraisal of Power-to-Liquid Fischer-Tropsch plants exploiting renewable electricity, green hydrogen, and CO2 from biogas in Europe

“…A detailed description of the CCUto-FT plant together with an energy analysis can be found at [9,14]. The FT synthesis accounted for a carbide mechanistic kinetic model for the description of the FT products generation [15].…”