The Fischer-Tropsch process is a set of chemical reactions that convert a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbons. A variety of catalysts can be used for the FT process, but the most common are the transition metals cobalt, iron, and ruthenium. Nickel can also be used but tends to favor methane formation. Modern density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been most often used for FT process. The modeling gives information about the elementary steps of FT synthesis on cobalt catalysts, such as adsorption, desorption, bond cleavage, surface reactions and hydrocarbon chain growth.

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