Effects of metal content on activity and stability of Ni-Co bimetallic catalysts for CO2 reforming of CH4 Original Research Article

Ni-Co bimetallic catalyst with a general formula of Ni-Co-Al-Mg-O prepared using coprecipitation has shown excellent stability and high activity for CO2 reforming of CH4 in our previous research. This paper focuses on the effects of Ni-Co content of the catalyst, attempting to avoid carbon formation on the catalyst. Catalyst samples with Ni and Co loadings ranging between 1.83 and 14.5 wt.% and 2.76 and 12.9 wt.%, respectively, were prepared and the activity and stability for CO2 reforming of CH4 was tested at 750 °C and 1 atm using a high GHSV of 180,000 mL/gcat h. The results show that catalysts with lower Ni-Co content (1.83–3.61 wt.% for Ni and 2.76–4.53 wt.% for Co) had higher and more stable activity with no deactivation and no detectable carbon formation and that those of higher Ni-Co content (5.28–14.5 wt.% for Ni and 7.95–12.9 wt.% for Co) experienced apparent deactivation with significant carbon formation in 250 h time-on-stream tests. Catalyst characterizations using TEM, XRD, H2-TPR, TG/DTG-TPO, N2-physisorption, and CO-chemisorption indicate that catalyst with lower Ni-Co content has larger surface area, smaller metal particles and better metal dispersion and therefore gives rise to better catalytic performance. The absence of large metal particles (>10 nm) is believed essential to the complete suppression of the carbon formation during reaction.