An Ab Initio Approach Towards Engineering Fischer-Tropsch Surface Chemistry
As petroleum prices continue to rise and the United States seeks to reduce its dependency on foreign oil, there is a renewed interest in the research and development of more efficient and alternative energy sources, such as fuel cells. One approach is to utilize processes that can produce long-chain hydrocarbons from other sources. One such reaction is Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is a process by which syngas (CO and H{sub 2}) is converted to higher molecular weight hydrocarbons. The reaction involves a complex set of bond-breaking and bond-making reactions, such as CO and H{sub 2} activation, hydrocarbon hydrogenation reactions, and hydrocarbon coupling reactions. This report details our initial construction of an ab initio based kinetic Monte Carlo code that can be used to begin to simulate Fischer-Tropsch synthesis over model Co(0001) surfaces. The code is based on a stochastic kinetic formalism that allows us to explicitly track the transformation of all reactants, intermediates and products. The intrinsic kinetics for the simulations were derived from the ab initio results that we reported in previous year summaries.
- Research Organization:
- University of Virginia
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG26-01NT41275
- OSTI ID:
- 882890
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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An Ab Initio Approach Towards Engineering Fischer-Tropsch Surface Chemistry
An Ab Initio Approach Towards Engineering Fischer-Tropsch Surface Chemistry