(32a) Alternative Fuels Research Facility

Facility renovations have been completed to an existing test facility, previously named the Heated Tube Facility at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) to be used as an Alternative Fuels research facility. NASA Glenn has invested over $1.5 million in facility upgrades including facility engineering, and infrastructure upgrades to allow the facility to be used safely with gaseous hydrogen, carbon monoxide, along with a variety of flammable liquids.

The purpose of this test facility is to conduct bench scale Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) reactor screening experiments by simulating a coal to gas conversion as a feedstock to the F-T reactors. These experiments will enable the investigation of F-T reaction kinetics, product yields and hydrocarbon distributions to optimize the F-T design process. Currently the facility has the capability of performing three (3) individual reactor screening tests simultaneously along with a fourth reactor chamber which can be used concurrently for catalyst activation and kinetic studies.

Gaseous emissions and performance data can be obtained at any instant with the use of a gas sampling system which connects directly from the reactors to the Gas Chromatograph (GC) analyzers for continuous observation and data retrieval. Liquid and solid emission samples can also be analyzed by injecting a diluted sample taken from the reactors into a Gas Chromatograph unit.

The test facility also has the capability of performing thermal stability experiments as a function of fuel composition and F-T reaction process conditions of aviation fuels with the use of a Hot Liquid Process Simulator (HLPS).

A detailed overview of the test facility systems and capabilities are described in this paper including future plans which have been through a preliminary design review.