Patent ID: 7491750

Claim:
A method for the separation of catalyst particles and the wax product from the output slurry of a Fischer-Tropsch bubble column reactor, said method comprises: i) Contacting a hydrocarbon solvent from a cyclic solvent stream with the slurry, wherein the solvent is a hydrocarbon fraction which is pressurized and heated to its supercritical state and the temperature and the pressure of the solvent at the supercritical state are similar to those of the F-T reactor; ii) Separating the catalyst from the hydrocarbon mixture of the solvent and the slurry in a catalyst separation section which comprises a forced sedimentation step as a primary separation stage and a following filtration step as a secondary separation stage, to form a concentrated catalyst stream containing the catalyst particles and to form an enriched solvent stream containing the reactor wax product and hydrocarbon solvent; iii) Separating the hydrocarbon solvent and the wax product from the enriched solvent stream in a solvent recovery section to form a recovered solvent phase and a purified wax phase; iv) Directing the recovered solvent phase to the cyclic solvent stream; which is used after re-pressurizing and re-heating in a supercritical solvent supply module to recycling the hydrocarbon solvent for the contacting step; v) Processing of the purified wax phase in an up-grading unit to produce GTL products; and vi) Providing of a make-up solvent for the cyclic solvent stream from a fresh solvent supply section additionally to the recovered solvent to compensate solvent loss in the process.