Fischer-Tropsch Screening Unit for Sasol
Sasol were looking for a parallel reactor system to enhance their catalyst research. It needed to be reliable, easy to use and produce data in a reproducible manner.
A fast Fischer-Tropsch screening unit
A fast Fischer-Tropsch screening unit does cold tail-gas analysis with on-line GC. Water and wax are collected in separate cold and hot traps and are weighed and analyzed offline. The long-term testing unit has a hot tail-gas GC allowing for measurement of up to C10. This powerful analytical approach results in an improved carbon balance as well as the abilty to derive Flory-Schulz distribution plots directly from the on-line data produced.
Incorporation of low-flow, pulsation-free syringe pumps means that minute amounts of liquid olefins can be dosed to study the kinetics of olefin incorporation. Water can also be co-fed to study steaming aging effects or the effect of water co-adsorption on reaction.
A carbonyl purification reactor in the feed section prevents low amounts of iron- or nickel carbonyls from decomposing on the catalyst surface and possibly falsifying data; a particularly large problem for long time-on-stream runs.
