4. Equipment
The inclined synol reactor has been described in detail in the preceding Section I (b). It is in principle a reactor using a flat catalyst bed. The cooling tubes were embedded in the catalyst and were designed as bayonet tubes with one end closed. This arrangement was chosen to facilitate filling and removal of the fine grained catalyst.
For a further development the Germans had designed a twin oven consisting of a common centerpiece which carried 2 inclined cooling coils within the catalyst. Each bed was to contain 6m3 of catalyst.
There had been several different pilot plant ovens used in the laboratories including 2 vertical tube-reactors with the catalyst inside the tubes. (Tube diameter 15 and 20 mm.). At the same time a horizontal plate reactor (inside a pressure drum) was also installed. This unit is practically identical with the Lurgi design. Only one short run was made with this oven.
In order to protect the catalyst in case of a failure in the cooling system hydrogen was admitted and all CO purged from the catalyst as fast as possible. The catalyst apparently forms a solid mass at the end of the run and must be drilled out of the tubes (80 working hours to empty 1300-15mm. tubes). Before the catalyst can be removed it is first extracted with an intermediate fraction of the product (150-240° C) by passing the liquid through the tubes for ½ hour. It is then dried and deactivated with N2.
The unloading procedure in the case of the plate reactor was still more complicated.
The new design (inclined tube handle) had not been tested in any large scale pilot unit, but the I.G. engineers had great hopes that it would solve all problems. All other equipment used in the pilot plant such as blowers, CO2 washers, coolers, charcoal adsorbers were conventional.