Supported Iron Nanoparticles as Catalysts for Sustainable Production of Lower Olefins

By Hirsa M. Torres Galvis, J. Bitter, C. B. Khare, M. Ruitenbeek, A. Dugulan, K. D. de Jong. Science, 2012

1,125 citations recorded by the source corpus.

From Plant to Plastic Petroleum is primarily used as fuel, but it is also used in the production of plastics. Thus, if biomass were to replace petroleum as society's carbon feedstock, a means of deriving ethylene and propylene—the principal building blocks of today's commodity plastics— would be helpful. Well-known Fischer-Tropsch (FT) catalysts can transform gasified biomass into a range of hydrocarbon derivatives, but ethylene and propylene tend to constitute a small fraction of the overall product distribution. Torres Galvis et al. (p. 835) now demonstrate a class of iron catalysts on relatively passive supports (carbon nanofibers or α-alumina) that robustly directed the FT process toward light olefins. A class of iron catalysts selectively transforms gasified biomass into the building blocks of common plastics. Lower olefins are key building blocks for the manufacture of plastics, cosmetics, and drugs. Traditionally, olefins with two to four carbons are produced by steam cracking of crude oil–derived naphtha, but there is a pressing need for alternative feedstocks and processes in view of supply limitations and of environmental issues. Although the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis has long offered a means to convert coal, biomass, and natural gas into hydrocarbon derivatives through the intermediacy of synthesis gas (a mixture of molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide), selectivity toward lower olefins tends to be low. We report on the conversion of synthesis gas to C2 through C4 olefins with selectivity up to 60 weight percent, using catalysts that constitute iron nanoparticles (promoted by sulfur plus sodium) homogeneously dispersed on weakly interactive α-alumina or carbon nanofiber supports.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Catalysis, Mechanical Engineering

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