Mechanistic consideration of paraffin, olefin and alcohol distributions in FT synthesis

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Abstract
It is shown that by assuming all chain growth in the Fischer Tropsch synthesis takes place on identical sites and that the various paraffins, olefins and alcohols produced are simply the consequence of different modes of termination, product distributions which agree with experimental observations are generated. In particular the reason for the “break” in paraffin distributions is seen to be the fact that paraffins can be formed by a termination involving either the addition of a hydrogen atom or of a CH3 to the growing chain. Since there is no comparable duality in the mode of olefin formation, olefin distributions do not show a break.