Effects of metal support interaction on dry reforming of methane over Ni/ Ce‐Al 2 O 3 catalysts

Dry (CO 2 ) reforming of methane is conducted over two newly synthesized Ni20/Ce‐γAl 2 O 3 and Ni20/Ce‐meso‐Al 2 O 3 catalysts. The x‐ray diffraction (XRD) patterns indicated that Ni20/Ce‐meso‐Al 2 O 3 exhibits a better dispersion of nickel, while Ni20/Ce‐γAl 2 O 3 has larger amounts of nickel crystallites. The temperature programmed desorption (TPD) kinetics analysis indicated that Ni20/Ce‐meso‐Al 2 O 3 had a lesser metal‐support interaction than the Ni20/Ce‐γAl 2 O 3 . The thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) indicated that the incorporation of ceria into the Al 2 O 3 matrix helps to stabilize Ni20/Ce‐meso‐Al 2 O 3 during dry reforming of methane. The temperature programmed reduction (TPR) indicated that the synthesized catalysts were sufficiently reducible below 750 °C. A fixed bed reactor evaluation (at 750 °C) showed that both catalysts can facilitate methane reforming to syngas with minimal coking throughout the 30 hours time‐on‐stream (TOS). However, Ni20/Ce‐meso‐Al 2 O 3 is more promising in terms of prolonged stability for dry reforming applications. Moreover, the syngas yield for Ni20/Ce‐γAl 2 O 3 is close to equilibrium prediction during the first 1 hour of reaction time.