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Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics makes new progress in the directed conversion of syngas. Author/Source: Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. Date: May 28, 2019. Clicks: 12. Recently, Pan Xiulian, a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Bao Xinhe, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led their teams to make new advances in the directed conversion of syngas; the relevant findings were published in Angewandte Chemie-International Edition. The precise control of C-C coupling has always been the most fundamental and challenging issue in C1 chemistry, and it is key to the efficient utilization of coal and natural gas. In recent years, this team has proposed the OX-ZEO catalyst design concept, which utilizes a nanocomposite bifunctional catalyst combining partially reduced metal oxides with molecular sieves to effectively separate the two key steps in syngas chemistry: CO activation and C-C coupling. This approach has enabled the selective production of C2–C4 mixed low-carbon olefins (Science, 2016; ACS Catalysis, 2017; ACS Catalysis, 2019), ethylene (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2018), and aromatics (Chemical Communications, 2017; Journal of Energy Chemistry, 2019). The team further utilized the confined selective effect of one-dimensional decagonal pore molecular sieves to modify the reaction products, enabling the one-step conversion of syngas into high-quality gasoline. At a CO conversion of 20%, the selectivity for gasoline among the hydrocarbon products is as high as 77%, which is higher than the highest selectivity for gasoline in the Anderson-Schulz-Flory (ASF) distribution (48%). More importantly, gasoline contains a high level of isoparaffins; its research octane number (RON) reaches 92 (octane number is a numerical indicator of a fuel’s resistance to detonation, with higher values indicating better resistance to detonation; gasoline produced through traditional low-temperature Fischer-Tropsch synthesis has an RON of around 35–43). Additionally, the aromatic content in this gasoline is reduced to 16%, which is below the limit specified by national standards