Under the guidance of Professor Xiulian Pan and Professor Xinhe Bao from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a research group has noticed that the direct synthesis of isoparaffin-rich gasoline from syngas with the help of ZnAlOx-SAPO-11 oxide-zeolite (OXZEO) catalysts.
Direct syngas conversion to isoparaffin-rich gasoline over OXZEO catalyst. Image Credit: FENG Jingyao.
The researchers interpreted the active sites of isoparaffin formation, offering instruction for the one-step synthesis of high-quality gasoline obtained from syngas.
This study was reported in the journal ACS Energy Letters on March 23rd, 2022.
Earlier, the DICP team suggested the idea of a new catalyst concept depending on metal oxide-zeolite (OXZEO) bi-functional catalysts. Also, it allowed the direct conversion of syngas to a range of fuels and chemicals with high selectivities, like light olefins, gasoline, ethylene, oxygenates and aromatics.
The concept of OXZEO offered a new technology platform for the highly effective utilization of coal and other carbon resources.
In this study, the researchers obtained around 82% gasoline selectivity and 34% CO conversion by modulating the distribution of zeolite acid sites, in which the ratio of iso/n-paraffins was as high as 38.
Maximizing the reaction conditions helped the researchers to increase the ratio of iso/n-paraffins as high as 48. This was the greatest value of the iso/n-paraffins ratio that has been reported till now.
Furthermore, a fairly stable activity in syngas-to-gasoline was denoted by a 150-hour on stream test of the catalyst.
Additional studies displayed that the external acid sites of zeolite can be the active sites for the development of branched, particularly the multi-branched, isoparaffins.
This study provided important guidance for the one-step synthesis of high-quality gasoline from syngas and even CO2.
Xiulian Pan, Professor, State Key Laboratory of Catalysis, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
The above study was financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Dalian High-level Talent Innovation Program, and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of CAS.
Journal Reference:
Feng, J., et al. (2022) Direct Synthesis of Isoparaffin-rich Gasoline from Syngas. ACS Energy Letters. doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.2c00467