PREPARATION OF Co/Si02 SPHERICAL MODEL NANOCATALYST USING REVERSE MICROEMULSION METHOD

Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis is one of the components of Gas-to-Liquid (GTL), Biomass-toLiquids
(BTL) and Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) technologies. Catalyst is a very important part of a
Fischer-Tropsch process. This FT process also uses Cobalt as the catalyst. Cobalt is usually
favored for lower temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis because it has higher stability, higher
per single pass conversion, higher yield, smaller negative effect on water conversion and higher
resistance to erosion compared to iron. There are few ways of preparing the Cobalt catalyst;
colloidal method, impregnation method, deposition-precipitation method, sol-gel method and
also microemulsion method. The most common method is incipient wetness impregnation using
cobalt salt.
There are many studies, methods and techniques that have been developed to synthesize catalysts
with the catalytically active material in the required size range. Catalyst performance can be
improved by tuning the crystallite size distribution for the required reaction. In order to achieve
the desired size, it needs a control of the crystallite size distribution and also understanding of the
fundamental principles and process variables in the synthesis of these materials. Microemulsion
method allows formation of particles in nano-size range with a small size distribution. The waterto-
surfactant molar ratio (Wo) can also be changed to vary the size of the reversed
microemulsions by using the water-in-oil microemulsion method. This method can be used to
control the particle size.
The catalyst is prepared using reverse microemulsion method and studies were conducted on the
effect of various amount cobalt loading content and various calcination temperatures. Apart from
that, several techniques are used to characterize the properties of the prepared catalyst which
includes TPR, FESEM and XRD. Experimental results indicated that high calcination at 450°C
and higher cobalt loading at 6wt% produces good nanocatalyst.