Nickel is avoided for this procedure because of its tendency to favor the formation of methyl, which is the source of one of its starting materials through steam reforming.
A natural analogue of this process features the reaction between olivine, water, and carbonic acid to give serpentine, magnetite, and the products of this process. A variation of this process that employs water gives highly branched products and is named for Kölbel and Engelhardt. The mechanism proposed by Ponec for this reaction explains the deviations of its products from a Schulz-Flory distribution. The commonly accepted mechanism for this reaction was proposed by Cheryl Rofer-DePoorter and, unlike the earlier Pichler-Schulz mechanism, includes chain growth steps besides alkyl migration to carbonyl. Nickel is avoided for this procedure because of its tendency to favor the formation of methyl, which is the source of one of its starting materials through steam reforming. The distribution of chain length for the products of this reaction is given by the weight fraction of n-length chains over n equals the square of one minus chain growth probability alpha, all times alpha to the n-1. For 10 points, name this process by which carbon monoxide and hydrogen are converted to hydrocarbons.
A natural analogue of this process features the reaction between olivine, water, and carbonic acid to give serpentine, magnetite, and the products of this process.
{Fischer-Tropsch}