Abstract: The commercial test of Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis catalyst CNFT-1 was carried out in two reactors of a 4 Mt/a coal-to-liquids (CTL) commercial plant. The test was divided into two stages: Firstly, the original catalyst in reactor was gradually replaced by CNFT-1 up to 95%. The results showed that the performance of CNFT-1 could meet the production requirement. Secondly, based on the data of the first stage test, the process conditions with CNFT-1 catalyst 100% loading were simulated and optimized by the F-T slurry reactor simulation software to guide the new test. the optimal conditions were as follows: the fresh syngas load of 102.34%, the catalyst inventory of 69.3 t, the effective fresh syngas space velocity of 5112 m³/(h.t), the reaction temperature of 273 ℃, the pressure of 2.81 MPa, the recycle ratio of 2.4, the decarbonization ratio of 0.156 and the H₂/CO volume ratio of 1.66. Under these conditions, the total CO conversion reached 97.4% with CO₂ selectivity of 18.8%, the CH₄ selectivity of 2.0%, and the effective gas consumption of 5630 m³ per ton of oil.

Key words: Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, catalyst, synthetic gas, slurry reactor, process optimization