Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis: Impact of Pretreatment of Ultrafine Iron Oxide Upon Catalyst Structure and Selectivity

The present study has shown that activation of a high surface area Fe2O3 catalyst in CO in a CSTR using tetralin as solvent results in an activity that is three times that of the material that is activated in H2 or directly in the syngas. Independent of the catalyst activation, similar methane and CO2 selectivities are obtained. This suggests that the active catalytic phase is the same for the three pretreatments. Since the particle size estimated by XRD shows a variation within 30%, the difference among the activities of the differently activated catalysts can be attributed to differences in the concentration of active sites on the catalyst surface rather than the extent of the surface.