The XTL (Anything to Liquid) Process

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XTL (Anything to Liquid) is recently emerging phrase that represented all of technologies intended to convert any source of carbon to liquid hydrocarbons. These processes have at least three main steps: syngas production, Fischer Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) and product finalizing. Syngas production might be different from feed and technology point of view and these differences affect all downstream units partially. In this step, source of carbon converted to syngas which is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Origin of the letter X in the XTL phrase depends on this carbon source since B stands for Biomass, C for Coal (bituminous or non-bituminous), G for (natural) Gas and W for Waste (petrochemical wastes, worn automobile tires and …) [1-4]. Amongst these routes steam reforming in fixed bed reformers and partial oxidation in auto thermal reactors are more attractive in industrial applications (both related to Gas to Liquid (GTL) process) [5]. Although these processes seem completely different form syngas production point of view but they are almost similar in the next step, the heart of any XTL factory, namely FTS. In FTS unit syngas converted to chains of different hydrocarbons such as paraffin, olefin, oxygenated and …, by use of sutiable catalysts of iron or cobalt based. This section is the most important section of any XTL factory and in fact XTL is translation of the classical Fischer Tropsch Synthesis the language of industrial and commercial world. Finally the hydrocarbon products might undergo some finalizing steps to reach the specifications of the market. This is the final step of a XTL process and might be comprised of different units with a variation of complexness depending on the final product quality and perhaps...

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The present work investigated effect of kinematic viscosity (ν), pressure difference (ΔP) and time (t) on the rate of internal filtration. An experimental setup designed and operated to take empirical data in different operating conditions and time. The most interesting part of the present investigation is fitting data with 16 different models. All models are a simple linear correlation of filtrate flux (Q) versus natural logarithm of time, but the coefficients of these models are simple or complex correlations of pressure difference and kinematic viscosity or ∆P and temperature (T). the results showed that a set of ΔP and ν was favored over ΔP and T. also all models fail to reproduce original data at severe filtration conditions of high viscosity and low ΔP. The reason shall be changing the flow regime through filter media.

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