Reactive Separations of CO/CO₂ mixtures over Ru–Co Single Atom Alloys

Reactive separations of CO/CO2 mixtures are a promising pathway to lower the energy requirement CO2 hydrogenation chemicals and fuels, with applications in U.S. Navy’s seawater-to-fuel process. With feedstock, challenge is activating CO produce heavier hydrocarbons while preventing methanation, requiring low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) catalysts. In this work, we demonstrate that Ru–Co single atom alloy (SAA) catalyst produces C5+ at rate 11.7 μmol/s/g-cobalt (hexane basis) 50/50 stream ≤1% conversion. The reaction operates relatively low temperature (200 °C) high gas hourly space velocity (GHSV: 84,000 mL/g/h) compatible upstream reverse water-gas shift reaction. Detailed experiments, characterizations, density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been conducted understand active phase, role Ru dopant, restructuring occurs elevated temperatures (>200 °C). dopants found promote reduction Co species, enabling catalytic activity for without pre-reduction, but may not enhance FTS or desired hydrocarbon selectivity.