Technical analysis of the modified Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process for direct CO2 conversion into gasoline fuel: Performance improvement via ex-situ water removal

The modified Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) process is a promising technology for direct CO2 conversion into liquid fuels. However, the low yield of fuels (below 29%) observed during CO2-FTS still great concern commercial deployment. Therefore, new strategies are needed to improve both and fuel process. A steady-state model based on first principles Anderson-Schulz-Flory (ASF) distribution was developed predict gasoline range hydrocarbons (C5-C11). implemented in Aspen Plus® using Fortran® routines validation performed different H2/CO2 feed ratios. Two configurations (including three-stage reactor series single with recycle) were considered performance analysis improvement through ex-situ water removal. Both showed significant improvements (from 34 above 70%) up 61.0% yield. Though recycle achieved higher production rate than 3-stage series, comparative at same 71.5% revealed that have similar efficiency roughly 66.4%.