Effects of Preparation Variables on an Alumina-Supported Fe/Cu/K Fischer-Tropsch Catalyst

摘要

Fischer Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) is a catalyst-assisted conversion of syngas (CO + H2) to hydrocarbons (C1–C50). Natural gas, one possible feedstock for the process, has recently had a historically low price. Additionally, the price of natural gas could remain low for the foreseeable future due to hydraulic fracturing. With this market condition and a relatively high price for crude oil, FTS has become an increasingly attractive process for production of liquid fuels. Of the two types of metals used for FTS catalysts in industry, iron (Fe) and cobalt (Co), Fe has some advantages over Co including lower cost, lower methane selectivity, and high water-gas shift activity [1]. Commercial Fe catalysts produced for FTS are unsupported because unsupported Fe catalysts have consistently been more active than supported Fe catalysts until recently [2–6]. Therefore, very little work on supported Fe catalysts is reported in the literature [2–4].