Methanation on exfoliated and supported MoS2

Abstract

The methanation reaction on MoS2 exfoliated to a thickness of a few layers or less and adsorbed onto alumina is found to be very small. However, by calcining and resulfiding the exfoliated MoS2 catalysts, greatly improved performance is achieved that is at least equal to the commercial catalysts based on ammonium heptamolybdate. The creation of molybdenum oxysulflde surface species therefore appears to be a necessary step toward producing significant methanation rates with exfoliated and supported MoS2. The methanation products are almost exclusively CO2 and CH4, their mole ratios near unity, with otherwise only very much smaller amounts of longer chain hydrocarbons. The activation energy for methanation is generally observed to be near 100 kJ/mol, with the overall reaction being first order in the carbon monoxide concentration and third order in the hydrogen concentration. In contrast to the transition-metal catalysts, no water could be detected in the reaction products of the molybdenum based catalyst. Keywords: methanation reaction on MoS2, exfoliated and supported MoS2 as catalyst.