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Figure 2 Fischer-Tropsch workflow at hte’s high-throughput test unit
Syngas to liquid hydrocarbons via Fischer- Tropsch synthesis Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS), which produces liquid hydrocarbons from CO/H 2 mixtures, is the central process of the SAF route via syngas. FTS technology was originally developed for the conversion of natural gas or coal into fuels. Recently, however, FTS has been attracting more attention as a way to produce value-added fuels and chemicals from unconventional feedstocks such as biomass or municipal solid waste. The hydrocarbon product spectrum from FTS follows an Anderson-Schultz-Flory distribution, which can be influenced by process conditions and catalyst selection. To target the highest yield of SAF, the formation of long-chain paraffinic hydrocarbons has to be favoured. Downstream hydroprocessing is then required to reach the desired fuel specifications. Sustainable syngas composition and purity vary widely; it is, therefore, necessary to enhance process efficiency by improving the catalyst and selecting the right reaction parameters to achieve a targeted product distribution. Catalyst and parameter screening, kinetic studies, quality control, and catalyst upscaling towards extrudate testing can be accelerated by high-throughput technology
featuring a robust and reliable gas-to-liquid workflow, as detailed in an earlier publication ( Knobloch, et al., 2015 ). hte’s well-established reactor packing protocols ensure stable plug flow conditions and prevent thermal runaways, enabling a broad range of conversion rates and reproducible performance data. The fully integrated data warehouse allows accurate quantification and real-time calculation of conversion, product formation rates, and mass balance (see Figure 2 ). The mass balance can be closed to 100±2% by combining the products generated in both the gas and liquid phases, each quantified via fast online detection and integral wax analysis, respectively. hte’s multicolumn/multidetector gas chromatography (GC), configured in-house, makes it possible to reliably discern paraffins, olefins, isomers, and alcohols. The great flexibility of high-throughput experimentation allows ranking among possible candidate catalysts with a one-to-one comparison. For example, the effect of the pore structures in different samples of Co/TiO 2 was highlighted by running 48 experiments within a five-week timeframe. This was achieved using 32 reactors in parallel to explore the parameter space of the kinetically controlled regime ( Schulz, et al., 2021 ). As another example, an
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