In producing syngas, which offers environmental benefits, dry reforming of methane (DRM) could promote the installation of the future carbon tax. This reaction has been already extensively studied and nowadays, no stable catalysts are enough efficient to scale up the process to its industrialization. It has been suggested that basic sites can affect the performance of catalyst. It is known that magnesium promotes the performance of catalyst. In order to understand the effect of Mg for dry reforming of methane, NiO-MgO-ZrO2 catalysts were studied. The activity was carried out at 700 °C in a fixed-bed micro-reactor under CH4:CO2:Ar=1:1:8. It was shown that the introduction of Mg led to an unexpected decrease in the activity when compared to non-promoted catalyst. It was also shown that the surface area, pore-volume, pore diameter, and weak basicity decreased when the Mg was introduced into NiO-ZrO2 catalyst. All these properties can cause a decrease in the activity, selectivity, and stability of NiO-MgO-ZrO2 catalyst for DRM.
Syngas production via microwave-assisted dry reforming of methane
