Scale-up of high-pressure F-T synthesis in 3D printed stainless steel microchannel microreactors: Experiments and modeling

Scale-up of Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis using microreactors is very important for a paradigm shift in the production of fuels and chemicals. The scalability of microreactors for F-T Synthesis was experimentally evaluated using 3D printed stainless steel microreactors, containing seven microchannels of dimensions 1000 µm × 1000 µm × 5cms. Mesoporous silica (KIT-6), with high surface area, containing ordered mesoporous structure was used to incorporate 10% cobalt and 5% ruthenium using a one-pot hydrothermal method. Bimetallic Co-Ru-KIT-6 catalyst was used for scale-up of F-T Synthesis. The performance of the catalysts was evaluated and examined for three different scale-up configurations (stand-alone, two, and four microreactors assembled in parallel) at both atmospheric pressure and 20 bar at F-T operating temperature of 240 °C using a syngas molar ratio (H2:CO) of 2. All three configurations of microreactors yielded not only comparable CO conversion (85.6–88.4%) and methane selectivity (~14%) but also similar selectivity towards lower gaseous hydrocarbons like ethane, propane, and butane (6.23–9.4%) observed in atmospheric F-T Synthesis. The overall selectivity to higher hydrocarbons, C5 + is in the range of 75–82% at 20 bars.