Lanthanum and cerium co-modified Ni/SiO2 catalyst for CO methanation from syngas

Sintering of active metal nanoparticles (NPs) and carbon deposition is critical problems for many metal catalysts, such as nickel based catalysts for generating methane from syngas. To improve the resistance to the sintering and carbon deposition, a new scheme was proposed in this work. Lanthanum and cerium co-modified Ni/SiO2 catalysts were synthesized by using perovskite type oxide of La-1-xCexNiO3 loaded on SiO2 as the precursor. In a nanocrystallite of La-1-xCexNiO3, ions of nickel, lanthanum and cerium are evenly mixed at atomic level and confined in the nanocrystallite, therefore, Ni NPs and the two promoters of La2O3 and CeO2 should be in close contact and highly dispersed on SiO2 after reduction. The catalysts were characterized by using XRD, TEM, BET, H-2-TPD, XPS, TG and Raman techniques. Compared with the mono-promoted catalysts, the bi-promoted La0.75Ce0.25NiO3/SiO2 showed much better resistance to carbon deposition, higher resistance to sintering and higher activity for CO methanation, which are attributed to co-eliminating effect of the two promoters for the deposited carbon, confinement of the interacted two promoters for Ni NPs and the higher dispersion of Ni NPs derived from the smaller size of La0.75Ce0.25NiO3. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.