Sign In Create Account

Advanced

1. 2. 3.

This topic

INFO PEOPLE PRODUCTS WIKI FORUM VIEW NEW CONTENT FORUMS MEMBERS GALLERY
GEK Gasification Forum Practical Engineering Gas to Liquid Processes 0

Making iron-based Fischer Tropsch Catalysts

Started by JayAlchemAPL, Jan 15 2011 09:42 AM

Please log in to reply 15 replies to this topic #1JayAlchemAPL Senior Member

Administrators


Posted 15 January 2011 - 09:42 AM

181 posts

The most common and cheap transition metal oxide for Fischer Tropsch (FT) catalysis is iron oxide. One glance at the floor of a metal shop and sourcing iron oxide catalyst seems like a perfectly reasonable proposition. However, most of the literature indicates there are surface characteristics and other details that matter as much as the raw material type used. Other important factors are things like: purity, particle size, porosity, pretreatment regimes, addition of promoters and/or supports (such as alumina oxide), and cocatalysts such as cobalt/copper/etc will allow for higher selectivity (meaning less deviation across the possible range of products) higher catalyst activity thus higher efficiency in carbon conversion to liquid fuel. These considerations for FT catalyst making do not necessarily render DIY catalyst making impossible, but lack of attention to these details will definitely challenge activity of the FT reaction as a whole. Earlier FT experiments have used magnetite for the catalyst to synthesize anywhere in the range from diesel, methane, and/or wax as a liquid product from wood gas/coal gas. Magnetite, is naturally magnetic iron ore, the 'black rust', Fe3O4, also iron (II,III) oxide. I am trying to recreate what these earlier experiments may have achieved. Like many of us that are interested in reading about this technologies we all start at the FT archives here:http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/ I was able order magnetite in a form other than ultra fine sand, Riesse Viking, which typically this company deals with selling quantities of this iron ore in the magnitudes of train cars. So this means that a 50lb order from them is considered a free sample, which they sent to me. Their purity is from 70-80 % mixed with aluminum oxide and silicon oxide -sand around .01-2.5 mm dia. Alumina oxide has been studied as a promoter in FT activity, and silicon oxide is inert.

This is not the only place to obtain magnetite. Another method is to pack a pipe with steel wool and lighting it on fire while blowing compressed air through the tube. While some iron oxide is successfully produced, often times it was difficult to keep the flame lit, or the air would blow the finer powder out of the tube before being fused into a workable particle range. Some was still successfully made, but it was difficult to achieve any sort control toward sieveable particle range or consistency.

I was also able to find a whole pile of stainless steel lathe chips of a uniform size for this project. They are beautiful, sharp metal chips from a lathe about 1.25 mm in length. The interest in starting with stainless steel is that it has about 10% chromium in it. Some articles have suggested (ie: Nature http://www.nature.co...s/156506b0.html) that chromium can actually be a promoter of iron FT catalyst because chromium oxide has a very high tendency in its adsorption of hydrogen. To oxidize the stainless steel metal, I used an oxy-acetylene cutting torch down in the shop. It was adjusted for an oxygen rich flame to melt and oxidize the chips and held about 2 inches from the pile of chips. This actually worked quite well. Some clumps were created, so I just chopped them up with a mallet. I was able to fire them evenly and it was common to observe a bubbling effect on the surface creating micro pores. This is only better for catalyst surface area!

It is also fairly cheep to obtain pure magnetite from ceramics suppliers. I was able to get it from Anexer which sells it for about 1.50 a lb. Their site here: http://www.axner.com...?find=magnetite Most magnetite that you will find at ceramic supply stores will be ultra fine because it is used to mix with glazes, magnetite is used to create a dark black finish. It is fine like sand/powder. Since magnetite melts at about 1540C, the plan is to melt it with the oxy-fuel cutting torch in the shop. Here is a quick article of an account of someone trying the same thing: http://www.oocities....e/homemagn.html I have currently not used the magnetite sand from Anexer quite yet but will be doing this one soon after running some of the other catalysts.

#2Mike

LaRosa
Junior Member

Members


Posted 16 January 2011 - 02:38 AM

22 posts

Hi J, Just Mike LaRosa here. We usually try to get to Lake Michigan a couple of times a summer near Two Rivers, WI. Along the western shore there are usually black bands of iron that are along the shoreline. I have collected a few cans of this stuff when I have seen it as it collects because of it's magnetic properties. Is this something you might be interested in looking at ? I'd be glad to put some in a zip lock in a bubble pack and mail your way. Just e-mail me direct if you'd be interested. Hope all is well on the West Coast. Just ice, snow and cold here right now. Regards, Mike LaRosa
#3JayAlchemAPL Senior Member

Posted 18 January 2011 - 08:23 AM

Administrators

181 posts

Magnetic sand, how cool it must look pooling up into clumps. I have to ask, does it all face north? I wouldn't mind tinkering around with some if you wouldn't mind sending it to us. Particle size is always an important consideration when trying to understand catalyst activity, and I'll tell you- trying to sieve out magnetic sand from slightly larger pieces of magnetic sand is probably one of the more annoying separations I have tried to conduct, and not entirely successful either. But if any does come out in the fuel, then it would be great to simply swipe a magnet through the gasoline to pick up any fine stray particles!
#4JayAlchemAPL Senior Member

Posted 19 January 2011 - 05:19 AM

Administrators

181 posts

There are two more steps typically considered for the pretreatment of catalysts to induce catalytic activity. After producing the basic catalyst with desired physical characteristics, there is typically a calcination step. During calcination, the catalyst is heated up to the 400-500C range and held for several hours. This step is to ensure that any volatile components are burned off of the catalyst surface. Any volatile components can gunk up any active sites and disable the activity of the catalyst. Here is an article that describes the preparation and pretreatment of a co-precipitated catalyst. The calcination step here is done in air at 500C for 5 hours. http://wiki.gekgasif...h Catalysts.pdf A second pretreatment step, reduction with hydrogen can be combined as a start up procedure in the

reactor column itself as an in situ operation. Some catalysts require a reduction step before they are catalytically active. Before the reactor column is brought up to temperature, all of the oxygen should be purged out of the system. This is because oxygen will attack active sites and decrease the efficiency of the catalyst. I have been doing this with a tank of nitrogen for this reason, and to prevent any stoichiometric mixtures of oxygen and gas into the reactor column. Hydrogen then is brought into the system and ramped up to 250C. It seems there is quite a range among articles of the amount of time one should reduce an Fe2O3 iron catalyst, anywhere from 2 to 24 hours. There are also some studies being conducted in activating catalysts in situ with carbon monoxide as well, such as the suggestion by this article: "Activation studies with an iron fischer-tropsch catalyst in fixed bed and stirred tank slurry reactors" http://onlinelibrary...740311/abstract Has anyone attempted to make FT catalysts?
#5mikeotter Junior Member

Posted 01 February 2011 - 03:47 AM

Members

6 posts

Jay, keep it up!! I want to add a few things here. I needed Iron Oxide at one point for a few things I was working on so I done some things similar to what you are doing. I propped a length of stove pipe on the 45 with a 90 elbow at the bottom pointing up..... Use pure Oxygen or mix it with the air you blow in. Be VERY careful and start slow with the Torch Oxygen. Ramp it up at a rate you feel comfy. The stainless will spew some evil shit so be careful. Your difficulty in keeping it lit will no longer be an issue at all. I'll go one step further in explaining how effective this is. If you have a steady hand with a cutting torch ( or a roller guide ) you can start making a cut and turn the combustible gas right off after you press the blow out bar on the torch as long, as you keep moving slow and steady. Keep the bar pressed as the cut starts,keep moving and just turn the gas off. You'll notice that the cut keeps going as you are not blowing metal out so much as you are just burning it with the OX.. http://en.wikipedia....essemer_process http://en.wikipedia....gen_steelmaking Look here and here for the heat potential .... BE CAREFUL !!! It don't take a bunch of Oxygen to get the job done so it's fairly cheap. Tell Payphone thanks for hooking me up again :) Thanks for all you do out there, Mike Anthony
#6jmonty1750 Junior Member


Posted 01 February 2011 - 02:02 PM

Members

3 posts

If had known you were looking for iron oxide I would have let you have my wood powered Escort after it died. It was generating copious amounts of iron oxide at that point and not much else. Seriously, though this is one place where you may want to look into the availability of commercial catalysts. With SASOL in commercial production and others trying to come on line there may be proprietary catalysis available for the purpose. You have enough of a hill to climb in small scale that you don't need to take on that challenge as well. I believe SASOL uses oxygen blown gasifiers with steam injection so they are starting with nitrogen free gas. Tolerance to tar and ash impurites by the catalysis is almost nil so you have to really work the filtration. US Air Force has qualified its planes to fly on FT fuel. GE and the Navy flew an F-18 on camelina derived bio fuel last April. This is going to happen commercially, and from what I've worked with the commercially made stuff is already very good stuff. Joe - M
#7sustainbiofuels Junior Member

Posted 04 February 2011 - 03:00 AM

Members

6 posts

Do you think the cost of a commercially prepared catalyst doesn't reflect the work involved in making a viable material? Often times, the price of a material is an indication of the work required to make it to an acceptable level of quality, do you feel that magnetite is not priced this way? It isn't always so, do you think this is the case with these catalysts? Don't you think your lack of an explosion proof setup is asking for trouble? You're working with hydrogen around open electrical contacts, heating tapes etc. I would strongly advise you to rethink your design and make it entirely explosion proof, don't hurt yourself.
#8tonofsteel Junior Member


Posted 04 February 2011 - 04:19 PM

Members

2 posts

In order to make explosion proof electrical circuits you can use the following intrinsic safety barriers that will reduce the risks (there are other manufacturers that have similar offerings I believe): http://www.phoenixco...ching/31248.htm From the site:

Quote Intrinsic Safety technology prevents explosions in areas where electrical equipment is used and explosive air-gas mixtures exist in their most easily ignited concentrations. This is accomplished by limiting the electric and thermal energy to levels that are incapable of ignition of these concentrations under both normal and abnormal conditions.

Where can you buy catalysts from? I have looked and found several companies that manufacter them but there is never a way to purchase them easily. It seems like the catalyst is going to be one of the more difficult things to get right, so if there is a way to purchase small quantities from someplace that did not cost a fortune that may be preferable to trying to get yet another variable right from the start (it looks to involve quite a bit of effort and specialized techniques, and it is difficult to measure your results). But I guess there may be no alternative in the end. I did see one place that was selling samples for somewhere around $250 per kg, but it was a zeolite catalyst and I am not sure about the characteristics or if it would be suitable for this application. As well it indicated it was for educational institution use so I dont know if it would be available to anyone. If there are going to be several people interested in experimenting maybe there would be a way to group buy some from a manufacturer? Does anyone out there know where it is possible to get some iron oxide based catalyst? A more broad question is what would be the best technology to obtain biomass to liquid? I have found several different approaches and they fall under 3 categories: - Fast pyrolysis (with or without catalyst) - Slow pyrolysis (with catalyst) - Gasification + FischerTropsch Synthesis Fast pyrolysis looks like it would be relatively hard to achieve since it is complex. You need to heat sand/catalyst to high temperatures and react it with the biomass trying to heat it at 500 Degrees/sec and then quickly cool it. It looks like you cannot distill the resulting liquid and need to have complex processes to reform it into a usable product. The slow pyrolysis looks to get usable diesel or other liquid straight out of the process without having to

do much processing, but there are highly guarded proprietary catalysts and process conditions that are used. It seems like it would be harder to obtain a proper catalyst for this route. Since the gasifier on here is a well developed and mature product it seems that it makes sense to persue the Gasification + FischerTropsch Synthesis. The liquids can be distilled so any usable fractions should be fairly easily seperatable, and any waxes or other products can be processed using existing petrochemical processes. I am wondering though that since catalyst is used in pyrolysis to favor certain hydrocarbon chains forming, would it be possible to utilize a catalyst closer to the gasification process to make the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis more selective towards the hydrocarbon chains you are trying to synthesize?
#9sustainbiofuels Junior Member

Posted 05 February 2011 - 11:35 PM

Members

6 posts

All my industrial experience is in synthetic organic, and polymer chemistry, but one has to wonder if catalysts like this may be best prepared immediately prior to their use, even under N2 or argon. Aldrich sells the finely divided magnetite, and the alumina, maybe it's just a simple prep, combined with a promoter, once one has these materials on hand. Research also indicates they don't tolerate the tars and such that often contaminate syngas prepared from wood gasification. Will try and find some literature on catalyst preps but have to hit the library. I'm willing to bet engineers aren't good at preparing catalysts, this is the domain of chemists. It appears that iron catalysts are always used for distillates in the diesel fuel range, it's temperature and pressure manipulation that select for chain length. I think the "water gas shift" is used to alter ratio's of CO to H2 in the syngas. Regardless I think the production of a lot of "wax" is inevitable. As in all petroleum synthesis, subsequent cracking is necessary to achieve max yields. The kind of cracking that would not be possible by the do it yourselfer.
#10sustainbiofuels Junior Member

Members


Posted 02 March 2011 - 06:20 PM 6 posts

http://www.rsc.org/e...65546-00001.pdf
#11Chemiboy Junior Member

Posted 05 May 2011 - 06:04 PM sustainbiofuels said: All my industrial experience is in synthetic organic, and polymer chemistry, but one has to wonder if catalysts like this may be best prepared immediately prior to their use, even under N2 or argon. Aldrich sells the finely divided magnetite, and the alumina, maybe it's just a simple prep, combined with a promoter, once one has these materials on hand. Research also indicates they don't tolerate the tars and such that often contaminate syngas prepared from wood gasification. Will try and find some literature on catalyst preps but have to hit the library. I'm willing to bet engineers aren't good at preparing catalysts, this is the domain of chemists. It appears that iron catalysts are always used for distillates in the diesel fuel range, it's temperature and pressure manipulation that select for chain length. I think the "water gas shift" is used to alter ratio's of CO to H2 in the syngas. Regardless I think the production of a lot of "wax" is inevitable. As in all petroleum synthesis, subsequent cracking is necessary to achieve max yields. The kind of cracking that would not be possible by the do it yourselfer.

Members

2 posts

I'm a Chemical Engineering graduate, and I'm currently working on my PhD in Heterogeneous Catalysis. I work on a daily basis alongside chemists (post-docs & post-grad students), our jobs are virtually identical. I have extensive experience in catalyst synthesis. To say that Chemical Engineers aren't as good at catalyst synthesis as Chemists is non-sense. Catalyst synthesis is certainly not all in the domain of chemists, especially when it comes to heterogeneous catalysis. Chemiboy
#12minerec Newbie

Members


Posted 17 December 2011 - 10:17 AM 8 posts

Hallo!

I have some questions about the FT catalyst. As I understand, elementery iron catalysis the reaction, not Fe3O4, so the first step is to reducate the Fe3O4 with CO to elementery Fe. In theory, shuldent Fe2O3 work as well? I do understand that big catalyst surface is wanted, thats why iron oxide is used but wuld iron shavings work as well? I know it might not work as well as Fe3O4, but wuld it catalise the reaction? I have some werry fine iron povder amd a small amount of Fe2O3, but no magnetite.

Thank you for your help!

#13BACel Newbie

Posted 10 April 2012 - 12:25 AM

Members

2 posts

A cheap source of stainless thou it may not produce good catalyst is inside of tires. Another possible source that may give a more uniform end product is stainless ball bearings. The price will probably be high ....... It seems like the focus should be the catalyst that produces the highest octane fuel. Because diesels are not that picky unless your trying to fuel newer high pressure diesels .I would not do that unless it was a necessity because it is easy to damage the IP ,intake /exhaust sensors, and injectors . on a grass root level its green(er) gasoline substitute that interests me.
#14minerec Newbie


Posted 01 May 2012 - 02:36 PM

Members

8 posts

I experimented on a small scale FT reactor I built a while ago. I mixed Fe2O3 with a Al(OH)3 gel and baked ti at about 600*C for 2 hours. It expandet and become realy porous. I grindet it by hand to small peases and filled in a 15mm stainless tube. I heated it to about 500*C with a propane torch and started to put hydrogen trugh. First nothing happent, thain after a while watter started to spray out of the exsit tube, meaning that the reduction was suxesful, becouse hydrogen took oxigen out of the Fe2O3, forming watter and living pure Fe. I sealed the reactor and made a oil bath around it. I heated it to boilingpoint (aboute 300*C i guess)and started flowing dryed and cleaned woodgas trugh. Interastingly, nothinh happend. No hydrocarbons, no watter, nothing. I gave the flask where the exsit products shuld slow to my friend who just came at a visit and he smelled it and said in smells like petrol. Not much, but it is a strart. The problem might be in temperature (havent got a temperature sonde), catalyst(not promoted, just Fe and Al2O3) or bad qualyti of gas( H2/CO about 1/2 at woodgas and a lot of nitrogen). Anyway, I am planing further planing and a small fuel plant in the future. Any ideas, sugestions...? Lep pozdrav!
#15Guest_bevandooley_*

Posted 11 February 2013 - 02:57 AM

Guests

Hi Julia, I am interested in making Fischer Tropsch catalyst from magnetite bough from a commercial supplier. I have personally designed, constructed and operated 500,000 litre/day biodiesel plants in the past and am looking to build a small scale 1 ton/hour FT plant in Australia. Do you have any reliable sources of data on FT catalyst preparation and activation ?? Looking forward to your reply. We are also currently doing waste to energy projects in the Philippines using our IFGT technology. www.btola.com if you are interested. Bevan
#16minerec Newbie


Posted 12 February 2013 - 01:50 PM

Members

8 posts

For a higher reacrtion rate a magnetie catalyst is not the best option. It just havent got enough surface area on witch the gases culd react. I made a batch of aboute 100g of catalyst just a week ago and is curently drying and tomorow it wil go in a caltinateing oven. It is made from iron carbonate on keiselgur support promoted with copper and potasium. This is the cheapest, most efective catalyst if you ask me. Quite a ambishious plan there i must say:)

#1 admin
admin Administrator

Administrators 45 posts

Posted 21 January 2011 - 10:24 PM " Dear Julia,

How much pressure are you using in the column? Do you have a link or citation for airblown columns? Please take a paragraph to charaterize the nature of your reactor's process, so that I might parallel your literature search in my own stacks.

The SASOL reactors use producer gas under 350 atmospheres pressure. I find this intriguing from my own stand point. I have been under critizism for compressing producer gas, because it would degrade under pressure. Now I am trying to reconcile how it is possible to have both recombination and degradation of the same gas under pressure.

I know nothing of FT. Perhaps these are obvious ideas but....perhaps you should run your reactor on oxygen first and actually get good reactants first. Then wean it off O2 to see what bad reactants look like. Then you'd have a range or scale to work with. Another thing that you might care to explain, is why you would take an oxide and reduce it to activate it? If reduction is needed, then you certainly have the most effective reducing agent in the form of slipped char. These cataylsts could be made in a forge under a reducing blast. Perhaps thats the reason behind the big push to make char? At any rate, please post more interesting details about your experiments, its fascinating... Thanks, BPJ"

Back to top

#2 JayAlchemAPL
JayAlchemAPL Senior Member

Administrators 181 posts

Posted 21 January 2011 - 10:27 PM Bruce, There are three distinct parts of the FT system. One is the gasifier to produce about a 1:1 CO and H2 gas, a clean up system, and the Fischer Tropsch reactor. In these initial experiments, I have removed the variable of the gasifier and clean up system for the time being to focus on variables unknown about the FT catalyst and reactor. I'm using a calibration gas of 20%CO, 20% H2 balanced with nitrogen as the feed for the FT reactor, which will let me focus on variables of pressure, temperature, flow rate, activity, production rate, etc of the catalyst. Once I successfully replicate some of these earlier experiments and these variables are known, the variables of a potential clean up system and the gasifier can be

cornered more easily. The formula here is that synthesis gas reacts across a metal oxide catalyst to form gasoline and diesel in the FT reactor. The metal oxide catalyst is most commonly iron oxide and/or cobalt oxide. It is critical that this reaction is allowed only in the absence of oxygen. Upon start up of the FT reactor, all oxygen is purged from the system because oxygen will degrade the catalyst, not to mention that air/fuel mixtures in a pressurized column are not good! The clean up system will depend on fragile the catalyst might be in the presence of char particulates/soot, acidic compounds, tars, and other contaminates. For instance FT catalysts typically require below 10 ppb of wood tar in the gas stream. Yes, that's parts per billion. Some of these contaminates will destroy the catalyst completely or clog active sites, but there are known and simple clean up trains that will do the job. It is a myth that compressed CO and H2 will degrade to CO2 and water over time. I see this myth coming across the gasification list every now and then. The physical problem here is, where does that extra oxygen come from? Or that the balanced chemical equation comes from the creation of a soot particle, a bond between two other carbons. The amount of energy it takes to swap an oxygen off of a carbon and replace it with a second carbon takes an amount of activation energy seen in the glow of a wood gas flare, and even here we still need an extra oxygen molecule. I will tell you the only type of degradation you will find with compressed synthesis gas. For this Fischer Tropsch reaction, I have a compressed tank of synthesis gas at about 2000psi which will remain as such for years. There is only one consideration, hydrogen is the smallest molecule so material considerations have to be made, for hydrogen can permeate through some materials. I have a flex line that connects to the FT column from the tank, even though it is rated for hydrogen, if it is bent or is flexed to create ever small micro cracks, the hydrogen can seep through these cracks leaving the CO behind thus resulting in a lower H2/CO ratio of the tank. Does this answer a few of your questions?

Back to top

#3 admin
admin Administrator

Administrators 45 posts

Posted 25 January 2011 - 07:16 PM From Bruce: "The reaction column will be working at 2000psi or less? You stated you had a tank of synthesis gas. I was thinking you had a three separate tanks of H2, CO, and N2. I was wondering why you wouldn't simply use the H2, CO mix first to see if the catalysts were working. By leaving out the N2, wouldn't you be eliminating the possibility of some form of the Haber Process occurring in the reactor? I guess I am trying to follow your reasoning more then anything right now. Its about the details, I am can only assume, that the catalysts are in a fixed bed configuration. Are you circulating some kind of solvent to remove the reactants? If not, then.... For the initial experiment, would you flash the reactants onto some sort of cooling plate within a tank or barrel to see what the results are? Or would you go straight into a distillation column? This process can't be 100% efficient. Can the unreacted reagents be recycled? It would seem hard to do from feed stock stored in tanks, but with an actual producer providing the feed, you'd have a compressor to send any unused reagents back to. Or they could be burned to provide heat to the column. Please forgive my apparent laziness, but do you already have an idea of what temperature, and pressure ranges are optimal for F-T? (I know I am supposed slog through hours of reading abstracts to get my answers, but I just cannot devote the time to it, right now) The catalysts... I don't suppose this is as easy as heating iron rings in a forge and quenching them when they are in their magnetite phase? anyhow, Thanks for your time, discussing this. BPJ"

Back to top

#4 JayAlchemAPL
JayAlchemAPL Senior Member

Administrators 181 posts

Posted 25 January 2011 - 08:00 PM Bruce, Thanks for your questions. The 40% nitrogen that is mixed with the synthesis gas is considered inert in this case. It actually dilutes the synthesis gas so that it is less concentrated. There are two reason for this. One is to mimic the percentages of the major components we are seeing in the gas stream from the gasifier. The second is to understand how dilution of the synthesis gas actually affects the products of the Fischer Tropsch reactor. The frequency of chain building- the event that two carbon bonds connect to build the hydrocarbon chain, [CH3-CH2-CH2-. . .]- will increase as the concentration of the reactant gas, synthesis gas, increases. For instance if I used 100% synthesis gas at across the same catalyst, temperature, pressure, and flow rate I will get longer hydrocarbons (wax and/or diesel) than I would using synthesis gas diluted with nitrogen, in which case I would get a lower alpha resulting in lighter hydrocarbons such as methane, propane, light gasoline, etc. Alpha is the number associated with the probability of chain growth of a chain building reaction. In this case we are building a hydrocarbon chain, C1, C2, C3 . . . C30. These chains represent the various products yielded by the FT reaction: Methane = C1 Propane = C2 gasoline = C4-C12 diesel = C8-C21 wax ~ C30 range The higher the alpha the higher there is a probability that another carbon bond will result thus producing a longer hydrocarbon chain. This graph is far from linear. Check out the graph posted on our wiki site here: http://wiki.gekgasif.../Gas-to-Liquids This describes the product yield as a function of alpha. The Haber Bosch actually does not compete at all with the FT reactions. Consider the Haber Bosch reaction below: N2 + 3H2 -> 2NH3 This reaction occurs at 2200-3600psi and 300-550C. The biggest reason that the Haber Bosch does not occur as a side reaction is due to the ratio

of N2 to H2. Hydrogen is in short demand by its surrounding molecules and would rather go to create a hydrocarbon or water well before creating ammonia. Hydrogen will have to be in excess, 3x the amount of nitrogen before ammonia is entropically considered as a product. Ammonia occurs at a much higher energy state than FT, and we can see this by the amount of energy it takes to push that reaction forward, by the amount of pressure and the temperature it takes to induce ammonia as a product. But this is a great question, because the Haber Bosch process does occur over a magnetite catalyst as well as FT but occurs at 100-300 psi and 250C. Separation of the products from the gas stream, is fairly simple, liquids separate from the gas stream. The gas stream includes both methane as well as a few other product gases which are typically flared off from the FT process. Since FT is optimized to yield liquids, this gas is made in only a very small amount and is not considered useful due to the low yield of product gases. You will find that in many FT processes the unreacted synthesis gas is recycled back into the reactor to increase yield. The new age catalysts, however, are expected to yield in the 80-90% on a single pass requiring no recycling loop for increased efficiency of the process. Currently I am using a fixed catalyst bed, but there are also slurry technologies as well. These slurry reactors are made up of the same catalyst of the fixed bed except they are ground up into fine particles, the slurry is a paraffin oil, for example. The slurry reactors do require some equipment to separate the slurry from the product, but these reactors have higher yields, and better heat sync capabilities.

Back to top