Revealing property-performance relationships for efficient CO₂ hydrogenation to higher hydrocarbons over Fe-based catalysts: Statistical analysis of literature data and its experimental validation

CO₂ hydrogenation into C₂₊-hydrocarbons is an attractive way to mitigate the green-house effect and provides new opportunities to produce valuable chemicals from the longer available raw material. The present manuscript introduces and experimentally validates a mathematical approach for identifying fundamentals affecting catalyst performance to provide guidelines for tailored catalyst design or for reactor operation. Literature data were analyzed by regression trees, ANOVA, and comparison of mean values. The Pauling electronegativity of dopant for Fe₂O₃ can be used as a descriptor for CO₂ conversion and CH₄ selectivity. In addition, combining alkali and transition metals as promoters for Fe₂O₃ is a promising route to enhance C₂₊-hydrocarbons selectivity and the ratio of olefins to paraffins. So-developed Mn-K/Fe₂O₃ catalyst (K/Fe of 0.005 and Mn/K of 0.4) hydrogenated CO₂ to C₂-C₄ olefins at 300 °C with the selectivity of 30.4 % at CO₂ conversion of 42.3 %. The selectivity to C₂₊-hydrocarbons (C₂-C₄ olefins are included) was 83.1 %.