Recently, a research group led by Profs. PAN Xiulian and Prof. BAO Xinhe from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences achieved directly synthesis of high-quality gasoline from syngas, their findings were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Schematic of high-quality gasoline synthesis directly from syngas over OX-ZEO bifunctional catalysts. (Image by JIAO Feng)
Syngas is an important intermediate platform for efficient utilization of carbon resources such as coal, natural gas and biomass, which can be converted to a variety of chemicals and fuels. However, precise control C-C coupling to fabricate desired products remains a challenge in syngas chemistry.
The OX-ZEO (Oxide-Zeolite) catalyst design concept, which was reported by this research group, has enabled selective syngas conversion to mixed light olefins with a high selectivity of 80% among hydrocarbons, to ethylene with a selectivity of 83%, and to aromatics with a selectivity of 73.9% , far beyond the limits predicted by the ASF distribution model.
“Here we reported one step transformation of syngas to gasoline with a selectivity of 77% at CO conversion of 20%. The hazardous aromatics content in gasoline (< 16%) was significantly lower than the limits set by most countries.” said Prof. PAN.
“The ratio of isoparaffins to n-paraffins was as high as 15, giving a research octane number of 92 in contrast to about 35~43 obtained by the conventional low temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis.” PAN added.
The aboved research provided a potential technology for one-step synthesis of high quality gasoline from a variety of carbon resources via syngas. It demonstrated again that the OX-ZEO catalyst concept was general and could be applicable for synthesis of other chemicals from syngas.
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. (Text by LI Na)