Reactor development for conversion of natural gas to liquid fuels: a scale-up strategy relying on hydrodynamic analogies

Gas-solid fluidized beds and bubble column slurry reactors are very commonly encountered in processes for conversion of natural gas to liquid fuels and light olefins. This paper proposes a unified design and scale-up strategy for such 'fluidized' multiphase reactors. The approaches uses hydrodynamic analogies as a basis. These analogies have been investigated in a variety of gas-solid and gas-liquid systems in several columns varying in diameters between 0.05 m and 0.63 m. It is argued that the appreciation of the hydrodynamic analogies will allow cross-fertilisation of concept and design data, thereby reducing process development costs.