Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis: Catalyst activation of low alpha iron catalyst

Abstract Activation with three different gases (H 2 , CO and synthesis gas) over an Fe100/K1.4/Si4.6/Cu2.0 catalyst was conducted to investigate the effects of pretreatment gas on Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) activity and selectivity. Catalyst slurry was withdrawn from the reactor at increasing time intervals of FTS for Mossbauer spectroscopic analysis. Activation with CO produced the highest syngas conversion while H 2 generated the lowest; syngas activation produced a slightly lower conversion than CO activation. CO activation transformed the majority of the iron into χ-Fe 5 C 2 and Magnetite with only 12% ɛ-Fe 2.2 C being detected. Unlike the CO activated catalyst, the syngas activated iron catalyst resulted in a lower amount of χ-Fe 5 C 2 than ɛ-Fe 2.2 C. The initial high (64%) content of ɛ-Fe 2.2 C decreased gradually to below 30% while CO conversion decreased from 83% to 55%. During this period, χ-Fe 5 C 2 increased from initial 10% to 33%. Magnetite changed little during the process while the form of carbides interchanged. Hydrogen activation yielded a low CO conversion of 50% and only 8% χ-Fe 5 C 2 and 16% ɛ-Fe 2.2 C was formed while Magnetite was as high as 75% after the FTS reaction rate became constant. Although activation gas type had a significant effect on syngas conversion, hydrogen, syngas and CO activations produced similar H 2 to CO usage ratio, hydrocarbon product distribution, olefin fraction, alpha value and CO 2 selectivity.