Catalyst diverts course of industrial process to make valuable hydrocarbons

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01 April 2026 Catalyst diverts course of industrial process to make valuable hydrocarbons A catalyst with two cobalt components potentially opens the way to sustainable processes for manufacturing light olefins — key ingredients for making plastics and detergents. By Jingxiu Xie ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7383-9016 0 Jingxiu Xie Jingxiu Xie is in the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen, University of Groningen, Groningen 9747 AG, the Netherlands. View author publications PubMed Google Scholar

The petrochemical industry has long relied on a process called steam cracking to break the heavier hydrocarbon molecules in crude oil into smaller molecules known as light olefins. These small hydrocarbons contain two to four carbon atoms and typically one carbon–carbon double bond, and are used as precursors of mass-produced products such as plastics, detergents and lubricants. Given that ageing steam-cracking facilities are gradually being decommissioned, there is an opportunity to shift the industry from fossil-fuel feedstocks to sustainable carbon sources. Waste biomass and captured carbon dioxide, for example, can be converted into synthesis gas (syngas; a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen), which could then be turned into light olefins using a variant of the industrial Fischer–Tropsch (FT) process. Writing in Nature, Han et al.1 report an ingenious approach for making a blend of catalytically active cobalt compounds that steer the FT process to convert syngas directly into light olefins.

Nature 652, 46-48 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00803-6

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Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.

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