| Summary: | Low-cost iron-based CO<sub>2</sub> hydrogenation catalysts have shown promise as a viable route to the production of value-added hydrocarbon building blocks. It is envisioned that these hydrocarbons will be used to augment industrial chemical processes and produce drop-in replacement operational fuel. To this end, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been designing, testing, modeling, and evaluating CO<sub>2</sub> hydrogenation catalysts in a laboratory-scale fixed-bed environment. To transition from the laboratory to a commercial process, the catalyst viability and performance must be evaluated at scale. The performance of a Macrolite<sup>®</sup>-supported iron-based catalyst in a commercial-scale fixed-bed modular reactor prototype was evaluated under different reactor feed rates and product recycling conditions. CO<sub>2</sub> conversion increased from 26% to as high as 69% by recycling a portion of the product stream and CO selectivity was greatly reduced from 45% to 9% in favor of hydrocarbon production. In addition, the catalyst was successfully regenerated for optimum performance. Catalyst characterization by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), along with modeling and kinetic analysis, highlighted the potential challenges and benefits associated with scaling-up catalyst materials and processes for industrial implementation.
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