The rate of iron catalyst passivation is strongly limited because the reaction of iron with oxygen is exothermic. It was proposed to perform passivation process using endothermic reaction of Fe oxidation with CO 2 . A thorough insight into the mechanism of the reaction of nanocrystalline iron with carbon dioxide was required. Therefore, oxidation of commercial iron catalyst for ammonia synthesis with CO 2 was investigated (T=300-500 o C, p CO2 =3.75-101.325 kPa). Thermogravimetry, XRD, SEM/EDX and GC were used in measurements.The only solid product of the Fe catalyst oxidation with CO 2 was magnetite Fe 3 O 4 , whereas the only gaseous one -CO. At the initial stage of oxidation of Fe catalyst with CO 2 the process occurred in accordance with the adsorption range model. In this scope, kinetics was described using Langmuir-Hinshelwood model for p CO2 <50 kPa. Above this value the oxidation rate is independent of p CO2 . With the progress of the oxidation process, the surface reaction ceased to be the slowest step, which limited the process rate, and the process started to be driven by gas diffusion in pores. The apparent activation energy was determined as ca. 120kJ/mol.It was assumed, that low temperature oxidation with CO 2 led to creation of magnetite layer, which had no passive properties. The complementary stage of passivation with oxygen at low pressure was needed to obtain a stable, protective oxide layer. However, the time spent on the whole process of passivation was significantly shorter than that in the classic route.