Fischer-Tropsch Process

Comment by Aref Najafi on June 18, 2008 at 9:37pm

Fischer-Tropsch process is a method for the synthesis of hydrocarbons and other aliphatic compounds. Synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, is reacted in the presence of an iron or cobalt catalyst; much heat is evolved, and such products as methane, synthetic gasoline and waxes, and alcohols are made. An important source of the hydrogen-carbon monoxide gas mixture is the gasification of coal and this process is named after F. Fischer and H. Tropsch, the German coal researchers who discovered it in 1923.
Initially when this process developed, high operation costs was major critics for this process. Nowadays increasing crude price and capital investment that is going to put in place to store and monitor the CO2, force us to re-evaluate the economy and efficiency of this process.

The goal of this group is to trade and exchange information about development of Fischer-Tropsch process. Meanwhile it is best place to exchange new ideas to develop new approach to use CO2 as a sustainable resources for future energy demands.

Comment by Aref Najafi on June 18, 2008 at 10:51pm

Best online information source for Fischer-Tropsch Process:
http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/

Comment by Dr. Franz-Luitpold Kessler on September 11, 2009 at 9:25am

Dear collegues,

i'm right now planning a Fischer-Tropsch- based project where the feedstock would be partly coal (for the H2, C0 synthesis), but also Hi-C02 gas (80 % C02, 20 % methane), reduced again with coal at some 900 C. If the C02 gets again reduced to C (C02 + C = 2 C0), will it react with methane? Any ideas or experience on this, please tell me! Kind regards Franz

Comment by Aref Najafi on September 24, 2009 at 7:26pm

Dear Dr. Kessler,
Thank you for sharing your experimental design with us, unfortunatly i am not able to comment on your questions. Now i am working in regulatory govermental organisations and I do not have hands in experiments.
I am interested in fischer-tropsch process and i believe this process will be the dominant process in the future. Thats why i try keep myself informed and up todate.
I would apprecaite if you can share your findings and developments of this process in the group.
Thanks

Comment by Dr. Franz-Luitpold Kessler on October 6, 2009 at 1:50am

Dear Aref Najafi,

thanks for your feedback. I worked through some of the basic reaction and I believe that there is a way forward - problem being always how to create large quantities of hydrogen. Here is a summary how it might work: By-the-way, this somewhat process could also be used to breakdown any C02 from any source and recycle it for a while as diesel, alcohol etc - still better than pumping C02 into the air and leaving it for good:

The synfuel synthesis from Hi-C02 gas, here somewhat modified, contemplates the following processes:

• Reduction of CO2 (constituting 80 % of the High-CO2-gas) by coal at a temperature of 900 deg C.
In principal :C + C02 = 2 CO;
In detail:
4 CO2 + 4C


• The resulting gas mix of CO and CH4 (the remaining 20 %) are pumped into another furnace; carefully injecting steam, CO is re-oxidized to CO2 and one molecule of H2 is created for each molecule CO2. CO2 reacts with CH4 and two molecules of H2 plus one molecule of CO2 are created
H2O + 1 CO = 1 CO2 + H2
CH4 + CO2 = 2 CO + 2 H2
Summarizing step 1 and 2, the complete equation can be shown as:

4 CO2 + 4 C + 1 CH4 + H2O = 9 CO + 3H2

To equalize the balance between H2 and CO, mores steam is required; this process works at 130 deg C;

The total equation can be shown as follows:

9 CO + 3 H2 + 3 H2O = 3 C02 + 6 H2 + 6 CO

• An equal mix of CO and H2 is pumped into the Fischer-Tropsch reactor, where polymerisation takes place;
• A simple distillation unit caters for the separation of different alkanes.
• The remaining CO2 can be fed-back to the first generator.

Hope I'll get the funds to try this out!

Comment by Artee Bansal on April 2, 2010 at 10:10am

Dear members
I am working on a project to make methanol from fischer tropsch process , but as i do not have much knowledge in this field so i would like to discuss it on this forum .I was going through the advantages of making methanol from fischer tropsch process but did not get any significant results ,so if anyone has any idea about it please share it here .... thanks in advance

Comment by Oleg Polyakov on July 2, 2010 at 3:24pm

Hi Artee,
Dr. V. Pisarenko in Moscow, Russia actively pursues a research and development in this area. My understanding is that experiments on methanol synthesis from syngas are going on a pilot scale. He deals with the process on all levels, including chemical kinetics, catalyst formulation development, and the reactor modeling. I could send you one of his recent papers.
My best regards,
Oleg

Comment by anwar ali on September 9, 2010 at 7:44am

i need process flow diagram for fischer tropsch process.. if anyone have it plz forward me....

Comment by Pranab on October 26, 2011 at 7:19pm

I want to know whether there is any Fischer-Tropsch process involving only CO2 and steam. I myself have an idea regarding that matter. I just want to change the process by which steam has been produced. Instead of boiling water, I first want to produce water vapor by vacuum evaporation and the use the vapor for chemical reaction.

By vacuum evaporation, the latent heat of vaporization of water comes from atmosphere and thus the amount of energy used will be much less than conventional method.

Comment by Pranab on November 4, 2011 at 3:31pm

Can anybody show some way to produce carbon monoxide from carbon-di-oxide.

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