3D
monolithic reactor has shown great promise for varied heterogeneous
catalysis reactions including water treatment, energy generation and
storage, and clean fuel production. As a natural porous material,
macroporous wood is regarded as an excellent support for inorganic
catalyst due to its abundant polar functional groups and channels.
On the other hand, a metal organic framework (MOF) has been widely
used as heterogeneous catalyst due to its high specific surface area
and large amount of microporosities. Combining macroporous wood and
a microporous MOF is expected to produce a high-performance 3D reactor
and is demonstrated here for Fischer–Tropsch synthesis. The
carbonized MOF/wood reactor retains the original cellular structure
with over 180 000 channels/cm2. When being decorated
with hexagonal-shaped core–shell Co@C nanoparticles aggregates
derived from Co-MOF, the MOF/wood reactor resembles a multi-cylinders
reactor for Fischer–Tropsch synthesis. Because of the unique
combination of macro- and microporous hierarchical structure, the
3D MOF/wood reactor demonstrates exceptional performance under high
gas hourly space velocity (81.2% CO conversion and 48.5% C5+ selectivity at 50 L·h–1·gcat–1 GHSV). This validates that MOF/wood can serve
as a multi-cylinders and high-power reactor for catalytic reactions,
which is expected to be applicable for environmental and energy applications.