Kinetic Rates of the Fischer Tropsch Synthesis on a Co/Nb2O5 Catalyst

The kinetics of the Fischer-Tropsch reaction over a Co/Nb2O5 catalyst in a fixed bed reactor was investigated experimentally. Experiments were carried out under isothermal and isobaric conditions (T=543 K, P=2.1 MPa) and under different conditions of several H2/CO feed molar ratio (0.49–4.79), space velocities (0.2–3.8 h−1), mass of catalyst (0.3–1.5 g), and CO conversion (10%–29%). Synthesis gas conversion was measured and data were reduced to estimate the kinetic parameters for different Langmuir-Hinshelwood rate expressions. Differential and integral reactor models were used for the nonlinear regression of kinetics parameters. One of the rate equations could well explain the data. The hydrocarbon product distributions that were experimentally determined exhibited an unusual behavior, and a possible explanation was discussed.