Therefore, intermetallic phases and alloys of bi-and trimetallic palladium-free catalyst systems such as supported AuAg , AgNi and NiIn systems as well as Cu-Ni-Fe systems have been tested and show high activity and selectivity in the acetylene hydrogenation. Studt et al. performed DTF calculations to identify non-precious metal alloys as catalysts for selective acetylene hydrogenation. They predicted and confirmed the suitability of NiZn and NiZn3 as well as FeZn alloys as catalysts with high selectivity and activity. A promising way to replace palladium as catalyst is the use of pure iron catalysts for the selective acetylene hydrogenation. Zero-valent iron as well as Fe II and Fe III are known for their hydrogenation activity. Furthermore, iron is one of the most abundant metals resulting in a low carbon foodprint and low water consumption during its production. Tejeda-Serrano et al. published the application of a Fe III -O metal-organic framework as catalyst for the acetylene hydrogenation under front-end conditions. The iron-based MOF reduces the acetylene content from 1.2 % to less than 10 ppm at 150 °C while ethane formation remains below 10 %. The increase of ethane formation over time indicates degradation of the catalyst under reaction conditions. More recently, Hock et al. published zero-valent iron nanoparticles as a very promising catalyst under front-end conditions. The catalyst shows good activity of 14 % acetylene conversion at 90 °C and excellent selectivity. In addition, the selectivity could be improved by adding carbon monoxide as selectivity directing agent. Based on these results, the systematic investigation and optimization of the catalytic properties of the above mentioned iron nanoparticles is of interest. Therefore, we developed supported iron nanoparticles with different iron loadings as catalysts for the selective acetylene hydrogenation under industrially relevant front-end conditions. This results in catalysts with smaller iron particle sizes, higher surface area and improved dispersion, leading to catalysts with excellent performance and selectivity.