Microreactors for synthetic diesel production to optimize nanostructured cobalt catalyst

This paper reports on a new borosilicate microreactor, utilizing a high-efficiency Fischer-Tropsch synthesis catalyst for the production of synthetic diesel samples. The microreactor has a novel on chip heater in a gas mixing region, and several independent channels where nanocatalysts of differing structures can be deposited for parallel testing. One new nanostructured catalyst is fabricated under a specialized electrodeposition environment that results in high aspect ratio cobalt nanowires which have a very high surface area and attrition resistance due to high crystallinity. The samples are collected and are analyzed for their specific diesel fractions.