Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis: Overview of Reactor Development and Future Potentialities

Since its discovery in the 1920s, the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) has undergone periods of rapid development and periods of inaction. Within ten years of the discovery, German companies were building commercial plants. The construction of these plants stopped about 1940 but existing plants continued to operate during WWII. Two types of reactors were used in the German commercial plants: the parallel plate reactors and a variety of fixed-bed tubular reactors. For the parallel plate version, the catalyst bed was located in tubes fixed between the plates which was cooled by steam/water that passed around the tubes within the catalyst bed (figure 1). In another version, the reactor may be regarded as finned-tube in which large fins are penetrated by a large number of parallel or connected catalyst filled tubes. Various designs were utilized for the tubular fixed bed reactor with the concentrical tubes being the preferred one. This type of reactor contained catalyst in the area between the two tubes with cooling water-steam flowing through the inner tube and on the exterior of the outer tube (figure 2). Figure 2. Section of Middle-Pressure Ruhrchemie Synthine reactor tube.