Evaluation of maximum gasoline production of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reactions in GTL technology: A discretized approach

In the present study, a new optimization procedure is applied on Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) reactions to maximize the production yield of gasoline (C-5(+)). In this way, the conventional synthesis reactor has been discretized into some elements. For each element, the inlet temperature, the injected hydrogen and the removed water are considered as decision variables. Then, the optimum amount of these decision variables is defined by using the differential evolution (DE) algorithm as an optimization method. Five distinct discretized reactor (DR) models have been investigated: the optimum inlet temperature of each element in DR1, the optimum hydrogen injection into each element in DR2, the optimum water removal from each element in DR3, the simultaneous optimum inlet temperature and hydrogen injection in DR4 and the simultaneous optimum inlet temperature, hydrogen injection and water removal in DR5. In all of these models, the objective function was the production yield ofC(5)(+) at the end of the reactor. The results of this theoretical study demonstrated that in comparison with conventional reactor (CR) the C-5(+) yield, in DR1-DR5 is increased up to 4.7, 46.7, 2.0, 54.2 and 57.7 percent respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.