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Fischer-Tropsch Technology
Sasol is an international integrated energy and chemicals company that builds and operates world-scale facilities and develops and commercialises technologies. Sasol produces a range of high-value products, including liquid fuels and chemicals, from coal and natural gas. Sasol also produces low-carbon electricity from natural gas. Sasol was established in 1950 in South Africa and remains one of the country’s largest investors in capital projects, skills development and technology research and development. Although Sasol was established in South Africa, it is an international company with 32000 employees working in 37 countries.
Sasol also has international gas-to-liquids (GTL) ventures in Qatar (Oryx GTL), Nigeria (Escravos GTL) and Uzbekistan. Sasol is also actively capitalising on growth opportunities in Southern Africa and North America [1, 3]. Sasol produces synthesis gas from the gasification of coal or from natural gas and converts the synthesis gas into liquid fuels and chemicals through FT synthesis. Sasol’s main coal-toliquids (CTL) process at Secunda (South Africa) utilises a multi-unit gasification plant where coal is converted into crude synthesis gas with the aid of heat, pressure, steam and oxygen,
while natural gas is reformed at high temperature with steam and oxygen in autothermal reformers (ATRs) to produce synthesis gas for the gas-to-liquids (GTL) processes. Coal conversion to synthesis gas is much more expensive than converting natural gas to synthesis gas. Sasol utilises two distinct types of FT processes for syngas conversion, namely high temperature (HTFT) and low temperature (LTFT). For the HTFT process in Secunda, purified syngas is processed in the Advanced Synthol™ (SAS™) reactors, whereby the syngas i converted to fuels and chemicals with the aid of an iron-based catalyst at temperatures of about 350°C. For the LTFT process in Sasolburg, purified syngas is processed in iron catalystbased fixed-bed tubular and Sasol Slurry Phase Distillate™ (Sasol SPD™) reactors at a lower temperature than the SAS™ reactors to produce linear hydrocarbon waxes and paraffins.
In another LTFT process, an advanced cobalt catalyst is used in the Sasol SPD™ FT reactor. This Co-LTFT process is used in Sasol’s three-step gas-to-liquids (GTL) process that includes syngas generation, FT synthesis and product upgrading. This three-step process is currently used in the ORYX GTL (Qatar) and Escravos GTL (Nigeria) plants.
Sasol produces a wide range of chemical products that are distributed across the world. Sasol’s base chemicals include polymers, solvents, explosives and fertiliser products, whilst the performance chemical business includes surfactants, fatty alcohols, linear alkyl benzene (LAB), short-chain linear alpha olefins, ethylene, petrolatum, paraffin waxes, synthetic waxes, cresylic acids, high-quality carbon solutions as well as alumina products [1, 3, 4].
Chapter 1: Introduction
1. Preface
2. Objective
3. Organisation
References
Chapter 2: Literature
1. Crude oil
2. Fischer-Tropsch Technology
3. Crude oil Product Processing
4. Fischer-Tropsch Product Processing
4.1. HTFT Processing
4.2. LTFT Processing
5. Characterisation of Petrochemical Process Streams (Analytical Techniques)
5.1. Multidimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC)
5.2. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC)
5.3. Supersonic molecular beams (GC-Cold-EI-MS)
6. Characterisation of Petrochemical Process Streams (Analytical Challenges)
6.1. Cyclic alkane and alkene differentiation
6.2. Characterisation of heavy oxidised paraffinic fractions
6.3. Improved identification of oxygenates
References
Chapter 3: Hyphenation of supercritical fluid chromatography and two-dimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for grouptype separations
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Experimental
2.1 Chemicals
2.2 SFC group-type separation
2.3 GC×GC method
2.4 Hyphenation of SFC and GC×GC
3. Results and Discussion
3.1 Optimisation of SFC fractionation
3.2 Hyphenation of SFC and GC×GC
3.3 Application of SFC-GC×GC-TOF-MS
4. Conclusions
References
Chapter 4: Two-dimensional gas chromatography-online hydrogenation for improved characterisation of petrochemical samples
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Experimental
2.1. Chemicals
2.2. Capillary reactor preparation
2.3. GC×GC method
2.4. Installation of hydrogenation reactor
3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Optimisation of the coating procedure
3.2. Optimisation of capillary reactor diameter
3.3. Optimisation of transfer line temperature
3.4. Application to petrochemical sample
4. Conclusions
References
Chapter 5: Analysis of oxidised heavy paraffinic products by high temperature comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography
Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Experimental
2.1. Chemicals
2.2. Oxidation of a heavy paraffinic fraction
2.3. GC×GC method
3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Selection of 2D configurations
3.2. Evaluation of 2D configurations
3.3. Oxidation reaction monitoring
4. Conclusions
References
Chapter 6: The pre-separation of oxygen containing compounds in oxidised heavy paraffinic fractions and their identification by GC-MS with Supersonic Molecular Beams
Chapter 7: Conclusions and Final remarks
References
Appendices
