A short review of heterogeneous catalytic process for mixed alcohols synthesis via syngas

Mixed alcohol synthesis is an important process for the production of oxygenates fuels, fuel additives and other intermediates for chemical feedstocks via CO hydrogenation. The process is a highly exothermal reaction, which essentially needs the combination of carbon-chain growth and CO insertion functions over the catalysts. The key to the development of mixed alcohol synthesis is the selective control of alcohols and efficient removal of reaction heat via both catalyst and reactor innovation. ICC-CAS (Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences) has been worked on mixed alcohol synthesis over heterogeneous catalysts and gained some interesting results in the catalyst preparation and process engineering. This paper thus briefly introduced the recent research progresses at ICC-CAS.