Skeletal iron catalyst having improved attrition resistance and product selectivity in slurry-phase synthesis processes

A method for preparing a skeletal iron catalyst useful for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis processes, comprising the steps of:

• a) providing a catalyst precursor metal alloy by mixing iron powder together with aluminum powder sufficient to provide iron content of 20-80 wt. % and 0.01-5.0 wt. % copper powder, heating said mixed metal powders together in an electric induction furnace under inert gas protection, while mixing said metal powders uniformly by magnetic stirring and melting the metal powders to form precursor iron alloy material, then cooling the melted precursor iron alloy to room temperature and pulverizing the resulting iron alloy to provide skeletal iron catalyst precursor particles having 0.1-10 mm particle size;
• b) contacting said skeletal iron alloy catalyst precursor particles with NaOH or KOH caustic solution having 10-50% concentration under inert hydrogen atmosphere by adding sufficient NaOH or KOH caustic solution having 10-50% concentration into a stirred container under the hydrogen atmosphere and heating the solution to 30-95° C. temperature, then adding the iron alloy precursor particles into the caustic solution at suitable periodic time intervals, while maintaining the reaction condition for 2-150 minutes and extracting and/or leaching out a major portion of the non-ferrous metal from the iron alloy precursor particles so as to provide a skeletal iron structure having particle size smaller than 10 mm, then washing said skeletal iron particles with ion-free water until pH=7, displacing the water with alcohol, and placing the resulting skeletal iron catalyst particles in ethanol;
• and
• c) treating the skeletal iron catalyst particles by drying and reducing with hydrogen at high space velocity at 200-500° C. temperature for 2-12 hours, then transferring the treated skeletal iron catalyst into water-free ethanol or liquid paraffin for storage.