BIFUNCTIONAL TRANSITION METAL-ZEOLITE CATALYSTS FOR SYNTHESIS GAS TO GASOLINE CONVERSION (ZSM-5, SYN-FUELS, FISCHER TROPSCH)

Conventional Shultz-Flory catalysts suffer from the inherent non-selective product distributions of Shultz-Floryian kinetics. Development of the Mobil M technology is the first major breakthrough in synthetic fuel technology in 5 decades. To utilize the Mobil M technology, synthesis gas produced from the gasification of coal must first be converted to methanol. The high pressures and/or high recycle ratios necessary because of the thermodynamics of the methanol synthesis reaction, make the overall cost of this approach prohibitive in today's economy. The logical extension of the Mobil M technology is to use bifunctional Pentasil based catalysts to provide a single reactor route from the synthesis gas to high octane gasoline. Various methods exist to incorporate the CO reduction function with the Pentasil zeolite. The direct synthesis approach which has been largely overlooked by investigators to date, will be emphasized in this research.