95/04651 Moessbauer study of iron-carbide growth and Fischer-Tropsch activity

Abstract

There is a need to establish a correlation between the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) activity of an iron-based catalyst and the catalyst phase during FT synthesis. The nature of iron phases formed during activation and FT synthesis is influenced by the gas used for activation. Moessbauer investigations of iron-based catalysts subjected to pretreatment in gas atmospheres containing mixtures of CO, H{sub 2}, and He have been carried out. Studies on UCI 1185-57 catalyst indicate that activation of the catalyst in CO leads to the formation of 100% magnetite and the magnetite formed gets rapidly converted to at least 90% of x-Fe{sub 5}C{sub 2} during activation. The x-Fe{sub 5}C{sub 2} formed during activation gets partly (= 25%) converted back to Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} during FT synthesis and both x-Fe{sub 5}C{sub 2} and Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} reach constant values. On the other hand, activation of the catalyst in synthesis gas leads to formation of Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} and which is slowly converted to x-Fe{sub 5}C{sub 2} and e-Fe{sub 2.2}C during activation, and both carbide phases increase slowly during FT synthesis. FT synthesis activity is found to give rise to {approx} 70% (H2+CO) conversion in the case of CO activated catalyst as compared to {approx}more » 20% (H2+CO) conversion in the case of synthesis gas-activated catalyst.« less