The influence of the Co/SBA-15 catalyst texture, such as pore size and pore length on Fischer-Tropsch (FT) Synthesis, was investigated in this paper. The morphology, structure, and microstructures of Co/SBA-15 catalysts were characterized by SEM, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), TPR, HRTEM, and XRD. The experimental results indicated that the increase of pore size could improve the activity of the Co/SBA-15 catalyst, and the further increase of pore size could not significantly promote the activity. Moreover, it was also found that the pore length of the Co/SBA-15 catalyst played a key role in the catalytic activity. CO 2 and C4+ selectivity were 2.0% and 74% during the simulated syngas (64% H 2 : 32% CO: balanced N 2 ) FT over the Co/SBA-15 catalysts, and CO conversion rate and CH 4 selectivity were 10.8% and 15.7% after 100 h time on stream.2 of 11 has uniform hexagonal channels and high thermal stability. The above features of SBA-15 lead to it being regarded as a suitable support for FTS catalyst [16]. Cai et al. and Wang et al. reported that the CO conversion was 6.51%-20.51%, and C 5+ selectivity was 42.43%-77.14% when Ru promoted Co/SBA-15 catalysts was used in FTS [17,18]. García et al. explored the effects of the Co-SiO 2 interaction, and thought that SBA could suppress the aggregation of metal particles and promote the metal dispersion [19].In this paper, the effect of the texture of Co/SBA-15 on FTS performance was investigated. Moreover, the reaction temperature and Co loading were also discussed.
Results and DiscussionSEM images of SBA-15 are presented in Figure 1. SBA-15 consisted of aligned rod-like particles with a diameter of 1 µm and a length of 2-3 µm longwise, which coincided with the results of Prieto et al. [20]. It could be clearly observed from Figure 2 that SBA-15 had a well-ordered hexagonal crystal structure composed of one-dimensional channels, which was highly ordered and stable [21].Catalysts 2018, 8, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 12