TPSR Studies: The Effects of Pretreatment Techniques on Silica Support for Cobalt Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis Catalysts

This paper focuses on the use of the Temperature Programmed Surface Reaction (TPSR) studies to investigate the effect of pretreatment techniques on silica support for cobalt Fischer-Tropsch (FT) catalysts. Untreated silica gel and two other silica gel each pretreated with thermal treatment and ethylene glycol (organic solvent) were used to prepare 10%Co/SiO₂ catalysts via incipient wetness impregnation. In this work, various catalyst characterization techniques were used i.e. BET, XRD, Hydrogen chemisorption, Temperature Programmed Reduction (TPR), Temperature Programmed Desorption (TPD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Also, the reaction behavior of the treated and untreated catalysts were studied using Temperature Programmed Surface Reaction (TPSR) technique by hydrogenation of pre-adsorbed CO. The characterization of the catalysts showed that the catalyst made with ethylene glycol pretreated silica gel gave a better cobalt metal dispersion and the TPSR studies indicated that this same catalyst exhibited higher CO activity compared to the other catalysts.