Abstract:
Aromatics are significant and essentially an important fraction of feedstock for the petrochemical industry, which have been mainly produced from fossil fuels for several decades. With the emerging concept of green economies all over the world, the biological origin for aromatic production seems to have a high potential in the future, which provides sustainability to petrochemical industry. Fe-based catalysts are well known for converting syngas, which can be produced from biomass, to linear hydrocarbons via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Pt/KL and HZSM5 catalysts are proven for their aromatization activity. The purpose of this study is to investigate the combined effects of Fe-based Fischer-Tropsch catalysts such as Fe/KL or FeCoK with Pt/KL or HZSM5 aromatization catalysts on converting syngas to aromatics. It was observed that at a given temperature, precipitated FeCoK produced heavier products than Fe/KL. In addition, the Fe/KL catalyst physically mixed with Pt/KL zeolite catalyst showed a better aromatic selectivity than the co-impregnated catalyst with the same active metal contents but decreased its selectivity drastically due to the deactivation of Pt sites by CO. In another test conducted to study the combined effects of HZSM5 and FeCoK, it was observed that increasing HZSM5 in the hybrid catalyst shows the best performance at the HZSM5 to FeCoK ratio of 2 giving 4.7% aromatics yield.
