methane oxy-steam reforming over a highly efficient ni/al2o3 nanocatalyst prepared by microwave-assisted impregnation method

An alumina-supported nickel catalyst was prepared by impregnation of ni^2+ solution onto mesoporous alumina undermicrowave irradiation (denoted as m-ni/al2o3). for comparison, a catalyst with the same nickel content was prepared by conventional impregnation method (denoted as um-ni/al2o3). both m-ni/al2o3 and um-ni/al2o3 catalysts were applied to the syngas (h2 + co) production by methane oxy-steam reforming in order to investigate the effect of preparation method on the catalytic performance.the reaction experiments were performed in a fixed-bed continuous flow reactor under atmospheric pressure. m-ni/al2o3 catalyst exhibited higher methane conversion (xch4: 0.94) than um-ni/al2o3 (xch4: 0.58) in the oxy-steam reforming reaction. in addition, the value of syngas yield in m-ni/al2o3 (3.21 mole per mole of methane) was almost twice that of one for um-ni/al2o3 catalyst (1.59 moles per mole of methane). various operating conditions, such as the influences of the o2/ch4 and h2o/ch4 feed ratios, temperature and ghsv on the methane conversion and yield of products were investigated. according to the structural characterization (ftir, xrd, n2 adsorption/desorption, h2-tpr and tem), the excellent catalytic performance of m-ni/al2o3 catalyst was reasonably attributed to the nano-sized and uniform distributed nickel species (<6 nm) which interacted with the alumina support strongly.