Process plant
AssigneeUnited Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
InventorsGeoffrey Coast, Ronald Francis Briody
Life of this patent
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Abstract
To supply process heat to a number of discrete reaction zones typically of a methane reformer plant, the hot gas from a nuclear reactor is employed. The reaction zones are defined within the bores of process tubes and heat is applied by way of gas conduits co-axial with the tubes. The reactants and heating gas are passed in counter current from header pipes which are coupled to the process tubes by flexible pipes. The latter are crushable to isolate any particular process tube, eg for replacement of catalysts etc.
Claims6
A process plant for performing high temperature endothermic reactions with the aid of a distributed catalyst and having a high temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor as a heat source, the plant comprising at least one bank of parallel, unidirectional-flow, process tubes, each tube defining therewithin a reaction zone, conduits for hot gas coaxially surrounding the process tubes to supply heat to the reaction zones, each said conduit being associated with one only of said process tubes, a first pair of header pipes, one header pipe of said first pair connected to supply reactants to one end of each of the process tubes, the other header pipe of said first pair connected to receive reaction products from the other end of each of the process tubes and a second pair of header pipes connected to supply heating gas to one end of each of the conduits and to receive said gas from the other end of each of the conduits.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.