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A thermal decomposition of a cobalt-lanthanum catalyst precursor containing a mixture of cobalt and lanthanum compounds obtained by co-precipitation were studied using thermal analysis coupled with mass spectrometry (TG-MS). Studies revealed that the calcination in air at 500°C is sufficient to transform the obtained cobalt precipitate into Co3O4, but it leads to only partial decomposition of lanthanum precipitate. In order to obtain Co/La catalyst precursor containing La2O3 the calcination in air at the temperature about 800°C is required. However, it is unfavorable from the point of view of textural properties of the catalyst precursor. A strong effect of storage conditions on the phase composition of the studied cobalt-lanthanum catalyst precursor, caused by the formation of lanthanum hydroxide and lanthanum carbonates from La2O3 when contacting with air, was observed.

In modern research on catalysts for NH3 synthesis a lot of attention is paid to cobalt. In this work the new catalytic systems based on cobalt are presented. Unsupported cobalt catalysts singly promoted (La or Ba) and doubly promoted (La and Ba) were prepared and tested in NH3 synthesis reaction under commercial synthesis conditions. Characterization studies revealed that lanthanum plays a role of a structural promoter, which improves the surface of catalyst precursors and prevents from sintering during calcination. However, lanthanum has a negative effect on the reduction of cobalt oxide, but the addition of barium promoter (Co/La/Ba catalyst) diminishes the negative impact of La. The co-promotion of cobalt with lanthanum and barium results in the increasing of the active phase surface and improvement of its activity in NH3 synthesis.