Dry Reforming of Methane by Ni-In-Ce Supported Catalysts

  • Abdulrahman Alharbi

Student thesis: Master's Thesis

Abstract

In light of global warming’s environmental implications, research is shifted towards potential processes that can utilize CO2 and reduce its emissions in the industrial sector. One of the promising processes is dry reforming of methane (DRM), which is capable of utilizing CO2 and producing valuable syngas (H2 and CO). The main challenge of DRM is the deactivation of catalysts under the reaction temperatures (above 700 °C) due to sintering of the active metal and coke formation. Ni-based catalysts are the most widely investigated catalysts in literature for DRM due to their cost efficiency and availability. This study is an extension of the work done by Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) devoted to investigating Ni-Ce-In system for DRM reaction. Five catalysts were synthesized by dry impregnation method according to SABIC synthesis procedure (Ni/Al2O3, Ni-In/Al2O3, Ni/CeO2/Al2O3, Ni/In-CeO2/Al2O3, and Ni-In/CeO2/Al2O3). The metallic loading targets were 7.5 wt.%, 10 wt.%, and 0.8 wt.% for nickel, cerium, and indium, respectively. The addition of indium in combination with cerium resulted in the highest catalytic activity. Additionally, the co-impregnation of indium and cerium resulted in enhancing the catalytic activity more than subsequential impregnation (Ni/In-CeO2/Al2O3 compared to Ni-In/CeO2/Al2O3). The addition of cerium or indium separately with nickel did not seem to affect activity since Ni/Al2O3, Ni-In/Al2O3, and Ni/CeO2/Al2O3 exhibited similar conversion values. All catalysts were stable for more than two days under DRM conditions without deactivating. Therefore, deactivation behaviors of the catalysts were not covered in this study.
Date of AwardAug 2022
Original languageEnglish (US)
Awarding Institution
  • Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering
SupervisorJavier Ruiz Martinez (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • Dry reforming
  • Catalysis
  • redox-shell
  • Ceria
  • Indium
  • Ni-based

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