EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

This work aims to contribute to the field of the nanoconfinement for catalysis, specifically in the Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis (FTS) from syngas of second and third generation biomass. Besides the several works in the literature with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and its applications in many topics, the nanoconfinement of metal nanoparticles in these materials and its influence on the catalytic reactions are still needed to be investigated.
In this work, we uncovered and investigated using a combination of advanced techniques (STEM-EDX, XPS, TPR, Raman, XRD) the role of the nanoconfinement , on the structure and catalytic performance of iron-copper bimetallic catalysts. We prepared monometallic and bimetallic catalysts of iron and copper impregnated in CNTs supports, using two different pre-treatments for the support and different impregnation procedures. We observed a considerable migration of iron and copper species in the bimetallic catalysts inside and outside CNT as a function of the operating conditions. The synergetic effects due to the nanoconfinement and interaction of copper and iron species resulted in a major increase in the Fischer-Tropsch reaction rate and selectivity to light olefins.