Supported Iron Nanoparticles as Catalysts for Sustainable Production of Lower Olefins

Abstract

From Plant to Plastic Petroleum is primarily used as fuel, but it is also used in the production of plastics. Thus, if biomass were to replace petroleum as society's carbon feedstock, a means of deriving ethylene and propylene—the principal building blocks of today's commodity plastics— would be helpful. Well-known Fischer-Tropsch (FT) catalysts can transform gasified biomass into a range of hydrocarbon derivatives, but ethylene and propylene tend to constitute a small fraction of the overall product distribution. Torres Galvis et al. (p. 835 ) now demonstrate a class of iron catalysts on relatively passive supports (carbon nanofibers or α-alumina) that robustly directed the FT process toward light olefins.