Effects of calcination atmosphere on the performance of the co‐precipitated Ni/ZrO2 catalyst in dry reforming of methane

Abstract

AbstractThe effects of the calcination atmospheres (H2, N2, and O2) on the performance of Ni/ZrO2 catalysts prepared by the conventional co‐precipitation method for dry reforming of methane (DRM) were investigated in this work. The catalyst calcined in O2 atmosphere (NZO) showed the highest Ni dispersion (10.99%), followed by the one calcined in N2 (NZN, 8.14%) and H2 atmosphere (NZH, 5.97%). Additionally, NZO and NZN exhibited relatively stronger metal‐support interaction than NZH and the incorporated Ni species on NZO and NZN were capable of stabilizing the metastable tetragonal ZrO2, which possessed more oxygen vacancies and higher oxygen mobility than monoclinic ZrO2. The evaluation results revealed that the activity of the employed catalysts displayed the following sequence: NZO > NZN > NZH, which was mainly determined by their Ni dispersion. The amount of carbon deposited on NZO (2.2%) was less than that on NZN (5.0%), and the deactivation rate of NZO (0.47% per hour) was slower than that of NZN (0.53% per hour). Due to its low CH4 conversion and the weak metal‐support interaction, NZH showed the least carbon deposition (1.1%) and the slowest deactivation rate (0.37% per hour) among the representative catalysts.