Developing Carbon Tolerance Catalyst for Dry Methane Reforming

Abstract

The overall goal of this work is to develop carbon tolerance catalyst for dry methane reforming using homogeneous method. Therefore, three different catalysts, named as NA, NM, and NAM, were synthesized, characterized, and tested. Their reducibility and basic site strength were carried out by temperature programmed reduction (TPR) and CO₂- temperature programmed desorption (CO₂-TPD), respectively. Activities for dry methane reforming of all prepared catalyst were also investigated. The TPR profiles show that the reduction temperature should be equal to or greater than 450 °C to reach a complete reduction. According to CO₂-TPD results, NAM presents the greatest number of basic sites. To evaluate the activity of dry methane reforming, catalyst samples were tested at temperatures of 600 °C and 700 °C using CH₄:CO₂ of 15 (mL/min):25 (mL/min) for 6h. As expected, methane conversion increases when operating temperature increases. For operating temperature of 700 °C, NM and NAM show similar high methane conversions, around 94 %, with high CO yield. In contrast, NA presents lower activity (methane conversion of 50 %) and lower CO/H₂ in the product. The dry methane reforming was also performed over synthesized catalysts at 600 °C using CH₄:CO₂ of 25 (mL/min):15 (mL/min). Using CH₄:CO₂ of 25 (mL/min):15 (mL/min), carbon can deposit on the catalyst easier than the previous condition because of the critical amount of CO₂. NAM provides the higher CO/H₂ than NM. It indicates that NAM is the most carbon tolerance catalyst because of the basicity of this catalyst.