Effects of calcination atmosphere on the performance of the co‐precipitated <scp>Ni</scp> / <scp> ZrO <sub>2</sub> </scp> catalyst in dry reforming of methane
Meng Zhang, Junfeng Zhang, Zeling Zhou, Qingde Zhang, Yisheng Tan, Yizhuo Han
Abstract
Abstract The effects of the calcination atmospheres (H 2 , N 2 , and O 2 ) on the performance of Ni/ZrO 2 catalysts prepared by the conventional co‐precipitation method for dry reforming of methane (DRM) were investigated in this work. The catalyst calcined in O 2 atmosphere (NZO) showed the highest Ni dispersion (10.99%), followed by the one calcined in N 2 (NZN, 8.14%) and H 2 atmosphere (NZH, 5.97%). Additionally, NZO and NZN exhibited relatively stronger metal‐support interaction than NZH and the incorporated Ni species on NZO and NZN were capable of stabilizing the metastable tetragonal ZrO 2 , which possessed more oxygen vacancies and higher oxygen mobility than monoclinic ZrO 2 . The evaluation results revealed that the activity of the employed catalysts displayed the following sequence: NZO > NZN > NZH, which was mainly determined by their Ni dispersion. The amount of carbon deposited on NZO (2.2%) was less than that on NZN (5.0%), and the deactivation rate of NZO (0.47% per hour) was slower than that of NZN (0.53% per hour). Due to its low CH 4 conversion and the weak metal‐support interaction, NZH showed the least carbon deposition (1.1%) and the slowest deactivation rate (0.37% per hour) among the representative catalysts.