(160c) The Impact of Catalyst Synthesis Techniques on the Activity and Stability of Ni/Cu Bimetallic Systems for the Dry Reforming of Methane (DRM) Reaction

Dry Reforming of Methane (DRM) process has garnered significant attention from both industry and academia due to its potential to produce ultra-clean fuels and value-added chemicals from natural gas and CO₂, the major greenhouse gases. Nickel based catalysts are generally utilized for commercial methane reforming processes. However, these catalysts when used for the DRM reaction suffer intense catalyst deactivation due to coking, which is a subject of several recent studies. In our previous studies^1-3, we demonstrated the use of bimetallic catalysts comprising of nickel and copper to address the DRM catalyst deactivation. Several techniques could be used to synthesize bimetallic catalysts, which will be discussed in this presentation.Specifically, two studies will be presented, a) the effect of doping the nickel catalyst with different loadings of copper (low, medium, and high), b) various synthesis techniques e.g., incipient-wetness-impregnation (IWI), sol-gel (SG), and co-precipitation (CP) and their impact on catalyst performance.

All the catalysts were characterized using a variety of characterization techniques (ICP, BET, H₂-TPR, chemisorption, XRD, XPS, SEM, TEM, EDS, TGA, TPO, DSC). These catalysts were then tested for activity and stability over both short time on streams (<10 hours) and long time on streams (up to 70 hours) operation. In corroboration from the observations in previous theoretical studies, our experiments demonstrated that medium copper loading catalyst synthesized using IWI technique provided the best activity and stability. Interestingly, the same loading resulted in adverse effect when SG and CP methods were used. We hypothesize this affect is due to the differences in the copper distribution on the catalyst surface during synthesis procedures. In essence, this work highlights the critical role of synthesis techniques on the performance of the DRM catalysts.

This work was conducted as part of the (NPRP-X 100-2-024) project funded by the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF).

References:

1. Chatla, Anjaneyulu, et al. Fuel308 (2022): 122042.
2. Omran, Ahmed, et al. Catalysts9 (2020): 1043.
3. Chatla, Anjaneyulu, et al. Applied Catalysis A: General602 (2020): 117699.