The reforming of methane from sustainably-sourced biogas to produce syngas has been proposed as a promising method of utilizing CO2 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Due to the high cost of noble metal catalysts, especially Pt and Pd, many non-noble transition metals such as Co and Ni have been shown to be promising candidates for methane dry reforming. The main constraints limiting the large-scale use of Co-based catalysts are deactivation through carbon deposition (coking) and sintering due to weak metal-support interaction. In this study, the catalytic behavior of Co/TiO2 and Co-Ru/TiO2 catalyst using two different types of TiO2 supports: commercial TiO2 (anatase form) and faceted non-stoichiometric rutile TiO2 crystals (TiO2*). The Co and Ru metal particles were deposited on TiO2 supports using a wet-impregnation method with the percentage weight loading of Co and Ru of 5% and 0.5%, respectively. The catalytic performance was studied using the CH4:CO2 ratio of 3:2 to mimic the methane-rich biogas composition. Our results indicate that the addition of Ru to Co catalysts supported on TiO2 and TiO2* does not significantly impact overall activity, but it is shown to help reduce carbon deposition. The catalyst supported on TiO2* has shown considerable improvement in the performance of both Co and Co-Ru systems for methane reforming with the highest conversion of CO2 and CH4 of 34.2% and 25.3%, respectively.

Effect of TiO2 supports on Co-Ru bimetallic catalysts performance for methane dry reforming

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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