Partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas over Ni-supported ceria catalyst

Abstract

Partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas (a mixture of H₂ and CO) over 5 wt.% Ni/CeO₂ catalysts has been studied in a fixed bed down flow reactor. The catalyst has been characterized by XRD, N₂-sorption, SEM, TEM, ICP-AES and XPS data. It is found that the Ni-CeO₂ catalyst can activate methane at 500 ºC, and with increase in temperature the conversion increases up to 86.1% at 800 ºC. The H₂/CO mole ratio is almost constant at 1.9 in the temperature range from 500–800 ºC. The activity of the catalyst remains constant till 30 h, which is the main advantage of the present catalyst. Various reaction parameters like temperature, time-on-stream and GHSV are studied in detail.