(582cs) Investigation of the Effect of Reducing Agents (Syngas, H2 and CO) on Catalyst Deactivation during Low Pressure Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis

An understanding of catalyst deactivation during Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) is an important piece of knowledge. In the literature, research has been done experimentally and theoretically and models have been developed on the deactivation of FTS catalyst. In the present study, experimental deactivation rates of three differently reduced catalyst in FTS are presented. Three fixed bed reactors were set in parallel and each was loaded with 1 gram of the same iron based catalyst. The catalyst was then simultaneously reduced with syngas, H₂ and CO, respectively, for 48 hours at 250 ^oC, under atmospheric pressure using a flow-rate of 60 (NTP)ml/min. The reactors were then subjected to the same FT reaction procedures for 5000 hours at a pressure of 2 bar(abs). The results obtained indicate that the use of different reducing agent does have an impact on the catalyst deactivation rates. The average activity loss due to catalyst deactivation was found to be 0.0025%/day for syngas reduced, 0.0016%/day for hydrogen reduced and 0.0027%/day for carbon monoxide reduced catalyst. The experimental data could imply that for long time FTS operations, the hydrogen reduced catalyst tend to take more time to deactivate.