A durable nanocatalyst of potassium-doped iron-carbide/alumina for significant production of linear alpha olefins via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis

Abstract

Improvement of activity, selectivity, and stability of the catalyst used in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) to produce targeted hydrocarbon products has been a major challenge. In this work, the potassium-doped iron-carbide/alumina (K-Fe5C2/Al2O3), as a durable nanocatalyst containing small iron-carbide particles (∼ 10 nm), was applied to high-temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (HT-FTS) to optimize the production of linear alpha olefins. The catalyst, suitable under high space velocity reaction conditions (14–36 N L gcat−1 h−1) based on the well-dispersed potassium as an efficient base promoter on the active iron-carbide surface, shows very high CO conversion (up to ∼90%) with extremely high activity (1.41 mmolCO gFe−1 s−1) and selectivity for C5–C13 linear alpha olefins.