Enhancing gas phase Fischer–Tropsch synthesis catalyst design

This paper presents the results on the research in the development of a Fe-based catalyst with Co as a co-catalyst, and Ru and ZnO as promoters. The catalytic performance of these materials for FT synthesis was investigated in the gas phase employing a fixed bed reactor system. The Fe–Zn–K/γ-Al2O3 catalyst performance was used as the benchmark. The data show that by varying the process conditions (T, P, flow rate), it is possible to achieve a narrow distribution of the liquid products. The effect of co-catalysts and promoters such as K and Zn are also presented. The results from a series of Fe4Co1Zn0.04 based catalysts for Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis, in which the different amounts of Ru are incorporated showed that the addition of Ru suppressed the CH4 formation at the cost of increasing the CO2 selectivity. The newly designed catalysts showed significantly high activity towards CO conversion (>70%), along with low selectivity towards CO2 (5–15%) and methane (ND – 3%). It is also shown that the support material plays a role in the selectivities obtained.