IMPROVED FISCHER-TROPSCH SYNTHESIS BY THERMAL MANAGEMENT OF THE CATALYST

Abstract

The research in this dissertation consists of a novel catalyst design which is aimed at helping manage the temperature instabilities and heat-transfer within a catalyst particle and maintaining an isothermal temperature distribution throughout the catalyst bed, with the goal of improving control on the rate of reactions and tuning the chain propagation that leads to having high yields of desired products (liquid alkanes C5-C22) while suppressing undesirable competitive reactions (WGS, Boudouard) and consecutive byproduct formation (alpha-Olefin, Oxygenates, and tail gas C1-C4) during the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS). Comparing FTS performance of the thermally modified catalysts and core-shell (CS) composite structure catalyst with a conventional catalysts and egg-shell (ES) catalyst resulted in higher productivity with a maximized oil selectivity in thermally modified and core-shell catalysts with tither product distribution due to the better thermal management of the catalyst bed in such a highly exothermic reaction.