Fischer-Tropsch Process
The Fischer–Tropsch process is a collection of chemical reactions that converts a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons. It was first developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany, in 1925. The process, a key component of gas to liquids technology, produces a synthetic lubrication oil and synthetic fuel, typically from coal, natural gas, or biomass. The Fischer–Tropsch process has received intermittent attention as a source of low-sulfur diesel fuel and to address the supply or cost of petroleum-derived hydrocarbons. A Fischer–Tropsch-type process has also been suggested to have produced a few of the building blocks of DNA and RNA within asteroids.
The Fischer–Tropsch process involves a series of chemical reactions that produce a variety of hydrocarbons, ideally having the formula (CnH2n+2). The more useful reactions produce alkanes as follows:
where n is typically 10–20. The formation of methane (n = 1) is unwanted. Most of the alkanes produced tend to be straight-chain, suitable as diesel fuel. In addition to alkane formation, competing reactions give small amounts of alkenes, as well as alcohols and other oxygenated hydrocarbons.
Converting a mixture of H2 and CO into aliphatic products obviously should be a multi-step reaction with several sorts of intermediates. The growth of the hydrocarbon chain may be visualized as involving a repeated sequence in which hydrogen atoms are added to carbon and oxygen, the C–O bond is split and a new C–C bond is formed. For one –CH2– group produced by CO + 2 H2 → (CH2) + H2O, several reactions are necessary:
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