Fischer-Tropsch Catalyst for Aviation Fuel Production

As the oil supply declines, there is a greater need for cleaner alternative fuels. There will undoubtedly be a shift from crude oil to non-petroleum sources as a feedstock for aviation (and other transportation) fuels. The Fischer-Tropsch process uses a gas mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen which is converted into various liquid hydrocarbons; this versatile gas-to-liquid technology produces a complex product stream of paraffins, olefins, and oxygenated compounds such as alcohols and aldehydes. The Fischer-Tropsch process can produce a cleaner diesel oil fraction with a high cetane number (typically above 70) without any sulfur and aromatic compounds. It is most commonly catalyzed by cobalt supported on alumina, silica, or titania or unsupported alloyed iron powders. Cobalt is typically used more often than iron, in that cobalt is a longer-active catalyst, has lower water-gas shift activity, and lower yield of modified products. Promoters are valuable in improving Fischer-Tropsch catalyst as they can increase cobalt oxide dispersion, enhance the reduction of cobalt oxide to the active metal phase, stabilize a high metal surface area, and improve mechanical properties. Our goal is to build up the specificity of the Fischer-Tropsch catalyst while adding less-costly transition metals as promoters; the more common promoters used in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis are rhenium, platinum, and ruthenium. In this report we will describe our preliminary efforts to design and produce catalyst materials to achieve our goal of preferentially producing C8 to C18 paraffin compounds in the NASA Glenn Research Center Gas-To-Liquid processing plant. Efforts at NASA Glenn Research Center for producing green fuels using non-petroleum feedstocks support both the Sub-sonic Fixed Wing program of Fundamental Aeronautics and the In Situ Resource Utilization program of the Exploration Technology Development and Demonstration program.