Comparative study on CO₂ hydrogenation to higher hydrocarbons over Fe-based bimetallic catalysts

This paper reports on notable promotion of C₂ ⁺ hydrocarbons formation from CO₂ hydrogenation induced by combining Fe and a small amount of selected transition metals. Al₂O ₃-supported bimetallic Fe-M (M = Co, Ni, Cu, Pd) catalysts as well as the corresponding monometallic catalysts were prepared, and examined for CO₂ hydrogenation at 573 K and 1.1 MPa. Among the monometallic catalysts, C₂ ⁺ hydrocarbons were obtained only with Fe catalyst, while Co and Ni catalysts yielded higher CH₄ selectively than other catalysts. The combination of Fe and Cu or Pd led to significant bimetallic promotion of C₂ ⁺ hydrocarbons formation from CO₂ hydrogenation, in addition to Fe-Co formulation discovered in our previous work. CO₂ conversion on Ni catalyst nearly reached equilibrium for CO₂ methanation which makes this catalyst suitable for making synthetic natural gas. Fe-Ni bimetallic catalyst was also capable of catalyzing CO₂ hydrogenation to C₂ ⁺ hydrocarbons, but with much lower Ni/(Ni+Fe) atomic ratio compared to other bimetallic catalysts. The addition of a small amount of K to these bimetallic catalysts further enhanced CO₂ hydrogenation activity to C ₂ ⁺ hydrocarbons. K-promoted Fe-Co and Fe-Cu catalysts showed better performance for synthesizing C₂ ⁺ hydrocarbons than Fe/K/Al₂O₃ catalyst which has been known as a promising catalyst so far.