Fischer-Tropsch Kinetics Comparison and Sensitivity Analysis for a Pilot-Scale Jet Fuel Production Reactor

Decreasing CO2 emissions is vital to achieve a sustainable world energy transition. One way to achieve that goal is to replace our current fossil-based carbon products with defossilized ones. Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technologies can contribute towards this goal by transforming captured CO2 and green hydrogen into a wide array of hydrocarbon chains. Under optimized conditions, a high concentration of long-chains hydrocarbons can be produced and further upgraded into jet fuel. Thus, difficult to electrify sectors of the economy such as the aviation sector could have a defossilized supply of fuel. In this context, the end objective of our research is to design, install, operate and optimize a FT reactor to serve as core of a future Power-to-Jet Fuel pilot-scale implementation at the University of Liège (ULiège).
In a previous study [1], the FT kinetics proposed by Iglesia et al. [2] and the stoichiometry reported by Hillestad et al. [3] were used to model said pilot-scale FT installation. Rouxhet et al. [4] then proceeded to use a more complex set of kinetics and stoichiometry reported by Ma et al. [5] for the same purpose. In the present study, the kinetics proposed by Yates et al. [6] are used to design the same FT installation and the results are compared to the ones obtained with the other two sets of kinetics.
The Yates kinetics using a Co/MgO on SiO2 catalyst were deemed the best suited for the design of the FT facility. Then, a sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the influence of multiple process variables on the conversion of the reactants.