A large pore-size mesoporous zirconia supported cobalt catalyst with good performance in Fischer–Tropsch synthesis

Mesoporous zirconias with different pore sizes have been prepared by controlling the synthesis conditions including the pH of the synthesis system and the amount of diglycol added in the initial system. It was found that the F–T catalytic performances strongly depended on the pore sizes of mesoporous zirconias. The cobalt catalyst supported on such a mesoporous zirconia with the pore-size of 9.1 nm showed better catalytic performance in F–T synthesis, especially, displayed higher selectivity to C12–C18 paraffin as the main component of diesel oil fraction as compared to an amorphous SiO2 with the close pore size. The above result was attributed to the combination of improvement of mass transfer derived from the large pore size and narrow pore size distribution of the mesostructure with the particular reactivity from the zirconia support.