Preparation of high temperature water gas shift catalyst with coprecipitation method in microemulsion system

•Nanocrystalline Fe–Cr–Cu catalysts were evaluated in HTS reaction.•Catalysts were prepared by coprecipitation method in water-in-oil microemulsion.•The effects of process parameters on the catalytic activity were investigated.•The prepared catalyst exhibited higher activity than commercial catalyst.•The best catalyst showed high stability during 10 h in HTS reaction.

In this paper nanocrystalline mesoporous iron-based high temperature water gas shift catalysts were prepared by coprecipitation method in water-in-oil (W/O) microemulsion. The prepared samples were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), N2 adsorption (BET), temperature-programmed reduction (TPR), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission and scanning electron microscopies (TEM, SEM) techniques. The results revealed that the Fe2O3 possessed low specific surface area and catalytic activity in high temperature water gas shift reaction. The addition of copper to Fe2O3 favored the active phase formation and significantly decreased the reduction temperature of hematite to magnetite and consequently improved the catalytic activity of Fe2O3. The incorporation of chromium in hematite increased the surface area and catalytic activity of Fe2O3. The results also showed that the prepared Fe–Cr–Cu catalyst showed higher activity than the commercial catalyst. In addition, the effects of GHSV, steam/gas ratio, and calcination temperature were investigated on the catalytic performance of Fe–Cr–Cu catalyst.

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