Effects of preparation technique and lanthana doping on Ni/La2O3-ZrO2 catalysts for hydrogen production by CO2 reforming of coke oven gas

Abstract

A series of Ni/La2O3-ZrO2 catalysts were prepared by homogeneous precipitation, template or sol-gel technique and used for hydrogen production from coke oven gas by CO2 reforming. The catalysts were characterized by BET, XRD, TPR, TPH, TEM and TG–DSC. A study is also carried out to observe the effect of lanthana loading on the reforming reaction. TPH results indicated the presence of more than two types of carbonaceous species on the used catalysts, which are categorized based on temperature difference. The low-temperature carbon species could be considered as the active sites for the reforming reaction. Experiments and TG-DSC results revealed that all of the catalysts present good catalytic performance and excellent anti-carbon property. The test results showed that the catalysts prepared by sol-gel method exhibited the highest catalytic activity due to their suitable pore size distribution. The Ni/La2O3-ZrO2 catalyst with 8wt% lanthanum oxide loading provides the best catalytic activity, which will be promising application on catalytic CO2 reforming of COG in the future.