Avantium’s Flowrence® high-throughput technology is extensively used for the parallel testing of heterogeneous catalysts over of a wide range of process conditions and applications.

The Flowrence® XR testing system can handle the most challenging feedstocks and effluent streams. The 16-parallel reactors with tightly controlled isothermal zones are ideal for Fischer-Tropsch (FT) catalyst research, which requires the handling of wax, water and gas phase products in the effluent stream.

This article presents the detailed results of such test i.e., Factory Acceptance Test (FAT), quantifying the repeatability of CO conversion, CH4 selectivity and C5+ selectivity.

Advantages

• Key features of reactor design allow for a reduced influence of exothermic reactions, resulting in more isothermal operation
• Testing of up to 16 separate reactors in parallel
• Downstream dilution with nitrogen results in a rapid quench of the reactor effluent, eliminating sequential homogeneous reactions post catalysis, and control of the effluent concertation for online GC analysis
• The design of the downstream section includes offline liquid sampling for collection of wax products. The wax collection is done in a temperature-controlled sample system that can be varied during the execution of a reaction
• Full headspace analysis of the reactor effluent, with option to include different types of hydrocarbon analysis (g. PONA)
• Automatic reconstitution of offline GC data and online data
• Full automated process control with Flowrence® XR software.