Performance Study of Methane Dry Reforming on Ni/ZrO 2 Catalyst

Dry reforming of methane (DRM) has important and positive environmental and industrial impacts, as it consumes two of the top greenhouse gases in order to produce syngas (H 2 and CO) and thus hydrogen (H 2 ). The performance of DRM of conversions of CH 4 and CO 2 was investigated over Ni/ZrO 2 catalysts. The catalytic performance of all prepared catalysts for DRM was assessed in a micro-tubular fixed bed reactor under similar reaction conditions (i.e., activation and reaction temperatures at 700 °C, a feed flow rate of 70 mL/min, reaction temperature, and a 440 min reaction time). Various characterization techniques, such as BET, CO 2 -TPD, TGA, XRD, EDX, and TEM, were employed. The zirconia support was modified with MgO or Y 2 O 3 . The yttria-stabilized zirconia catalyst (5Ni15YZr) provided the optimum activity performance of CH 4 and CO 2 conversions of 56.1 and 64.3%, respectively, at 700 °C and a 70 mL/min flow rate; this catalyst also had the highest basicity. The Ni-based catalyst was promoted with Cs, Ga, and Sr. The Sr-promoted catalyst produced the highest enhancement of activity. The influence of the reaction temperature and the feed flow rate on 5Ni15YZr and 5NiSr15YZr indicated that the activity increased with the increase in the reaction temperature and lower feed flow rate. For 5Ni3Sr15YZr, at a reaction temperature of 800 °C, the CH 4 and CO 2 conversions were 76.3 and 79.9%, respectively, whereas at 700 °C, the conversions of CH 4 and CO 2 were 66.6 and 79.6% respectively.