Josh Schaidle

Ph.D. Candidate
B.S.: Chemical Engineering 2006, University of California, Santa Barbara

schaidle@umich.edu

Due to environmental concerns, depleting crude oil resources and our country’s dependence on foreign oil, a renewable and environmentally-friendly route for the production of liquid fuels and chemical feedstocks needs to be developed. The production of liquid hydrocarbon fuels from biomass-derived synthesis gas via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) is a potential route for meeting this need. FTS converts H₂ and CO into high quality liquid hydrocarbon fuels with very low aromaticity and virtually zero sulfur content. In order to improve the feasibility of this process, FTS catalysts with enhanced activity and selectivity towards valuable products such as C₂-C₄ hydrocarbons, gasoline, and diesel must be investigated.

The objective of this work is to determine the activity and selectivity of a variety of transition metal carbides and nitrides for FTS. Transition metal carbides and nitrides have been shown to be highly active for a variety of reactions ranging from water gas shift and steam reforming to hydrogenation and desulfurization. Preliminary results indicate that Mo₂C is active for FTS and has a product distribution similar to a commercial Fe/SiO₂ catalyst. Along with using these transition metal carbides and nitrides as catalysts, our research group has developed a novel process to support other metals onto the surface of these materials. For the water gas shift reaction, this process has been shown to promote a synergistic effect between the metal and the support. Utilizing this process, transition metal carbide and nitride-supported metal catalysts will also be tested for FTS.