MaximaLabs
Back to gallery
Power-to-Liquids demonstration plant, Werlte, Germany

e-Fuels (Power-to-Liquids): rWGS + Fischer-Tropsch — a PENG-ROBINSON process flowsheet

The Power-to-Liquids / e-SAF pathway: captured CO₂ and green hydrogen are converted to synthetic hydrocarbons. A reverse water-gas-shift reactor turns CO₂ + H₂ into CO + H₂O (solved to real chemical equilibrium), the water is knocked out, and the syngas feeds a Fischer-Tropsch reactor that builds a whole hydrocarbon slate via the Anderson-Schulz-Flory chain-growth law. The single knob that sets the product spectrum is the chain-growth probability alpha (here 0.90): a high alpha shifts the slate toward diesel/wax, a low alpha toward LPG/naphtha — the reactor distributes the reacted carbon across n-paraffins C₁..C₈ (the tail lumped as C₈ wax) with exact C/H/O atom balances, so it conserves atoms wherever the distribution is cut.

Modeling assumptions & limitations

  1. 1(see): this is the standard **yield/selectivity** FT model (ASF + specified CO conversion), not a mechanistic kinetic or slurry/fixed-bed hydrodynamic model; olefin/oxygenate co-products aren't split out (paraffins + water only); the raw syncrude effluent is delivered as-is (a real plant recycles the H₂-rich tail gas and fractionates the liquid — shown here as the reactor product, not a finished fuel cut); and the rWGS Keq is the representative high-temperature equilibrium magnitude.

185 views 1 forks

FEED
RWGS
Cool1
KO
RWGS Water
HEAT
FT
Syncrude
What this showcases
  • Rigorous PENG-ROBINSON thermodynamics, solved by the same engine every simulation runs on.
  • 4 unit operations modeled: RWGS, 2× HEAT, KO, FT.
  • Focus areas: e-fuels, Power-to-Liquids, Fischer-Tropsch, ASF distribution, e-SAF.
Specification
Thermodynamics
PENG-ROBINSON
Components
co2, h2, co, water, methane, ethane, propane, n_butane, n_pentane, n_hexane, n_heptane, n_octane
Unit operations
RWGS2× HEATKOFT
Open in workspace

Opens in a new tab, loaded straight into the app — no setup.

Read the step-by-step guide
Python SDK

Reproduce this exact result from Python — the real client.get_example() → run_and_wait() path, not a mockup.

from flowsim.sdk import FlowSimClient

client = FlowSimClient()
example = client.get_example("e-fuels-power-to-liquids")
sim = client.create_simulation(example["title"], example["flowsheet"])
result = client.run_and_wait(sim["id"])

print(result["status"])              # "converged"
streams = client.streams(sim["id"])

Related models

Werlte, Germany

CO₂ methanation (e-fuels / power-to-gas)

The Sabatier reaction (CO₂ + 4H₂ ⇌ CH₄ + 2H₂O) converts captured CO₂ and green H₂ into synthetic natural gas at a 97% single-pass-equivalent conversion (real plants stage several adiabatic beds with intercooling to reach this; lumped into one reactor here), then a cooler and knockout drum condense the reaction water from the SNG — the e-fuels loop that closes the loop on captured carbon instead of just storing it.

LanzaJet Freedom Pines Fuels, Soperton, Georgia, USA

Sustainable Aviation Fuel via Alcohol-to-Jet

Bio-ethanol is catalytically dehydrated to ethylene, oligomerized toward a decene-range olefin, then hydrogenated to n-decane — a real synthetic paraffin in the SAF/jet-range carbon-number band.

Erlangen, Germany

LOHC hydrogen release (methylcyclohexane dehydrogenation)

A liquid organic hydrogen carrier (LOHC) power train: methylcyclohexane (MCH) is preheated and catalytically dehydrogenated (MCH → toluene + 3H2, endothermic, equilibrium-limited to ~90% single-pass conversion) to release hydrogen for downstream power generation. A flash drum separates the H₂-rich gas from the liquid; a distillation column then recovers the unreacted MCH overhead and recycles it to the reactor feed, closing a real tight liquid recycle loop, while spent toluene leaves the bottoms (to be re-hydrogenated back to MCH off-site, closing the supply-chain loop — out of scope for this dehydrogenation-side flowsheet). Screening-fidelity note: MCH and toluene are genuinely close-boiling (relative volatility ~1.4 under this thermo package at column conditions), so the recycle carries real toluene along with the recovered MCH rather than a sharp cut — a production column would use more stages to purify it further; this shows the recycle topology and its convergence, not an optimized column design.

Direct-reduced-iron (green steel) plant, Boden, Sweden

On-site oxygen: multi-bed vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA)

Medical- / green-steel-grade oxygen generated on site from air by a 4-bed vacuum pressure swing adsorption unit over an N₂-selective zeolite (LiX/13X). This uses the native VPSA unit op — the proven 2-bed Skarstrom engine generalized to N beds with pressure-equalization steps and sub-atmospheric evacuation: nitrogen is adsorbed while oxygen passes as the light product, then each bed is pulled to a vacuum to desorb the nitrogen tail gas. The solver runs the real cyclic transient (tanks-in-series bed discretization + linear-driving-force kinetics + inter-bed equalization) to a periodic steady state — the transient dynamic equilibrium legacy steady-state simulators cannot capture without a separate dynamic license.

Herten, Germany

Green hydrogen (electrolysis)

A 1 MW PEM electrolyzer splitting water into hydrogen — a new-energy workflow (carbon footprint + cost track the electricity).

NEOM, Saudi Arabia

Green ammonia synthesis

An equilibrium reactor runs N₂ + 3H₂ ⇌ 2NH₃ on green-hydrogen syngas (Keq illustrative) — the new-energy leapfrog workflow.

Stop fighting legacy software. Build your first flowsheet in 60 seconds.