Center for Functional Nanomaterials Seminar

FTS (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis) is a process developed by two German researchers, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, in the 1920s, which catalytically convert syngas (CO + H2) into hydrocarbon products: nCO + {2n(+1)}H2 → CnH2n(+2) + nH2O. Iron-based catalysts are highly promising for the FTS due to their low cost and high activity. A precipitation technique is one of the most widely used preparation methods of iron-based FTS catalysts as this technique can generate high-surface-area catalysts and facilitate mass catalyst production. In general, the as-prepared precipitated iron-based catalysts are inactive for the FTS and barely changed into an active form in the reaction condition. Therefore, the as-prepared precipitated iron-based catalysts must be subjected to an appropriate pre-activation process. In this presentation, we report SponCatTM, the unique precipitated iron-based catalysts developed by KIER. Unlike conventional catalysts, KIER's SponCatTM requires no pre-activation treatment because the SponCatTM can be spontaneously activated in the FTS condition. We proved the validity of SponCatTM in a pilot-scale slurry phase reactor as well as a lab-scale plug flow reactor.