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Gasified biomass syngas has been successfully used to produce liquid hydrocarbons at pilot scale using a novel biochar-supported catalyst. Producer gas from a downdraft gasifier was made from woodchips and contained 53% N2, 17% CO, 14% H2, 13% CO2, and 2% CH4 after undergoing a rigorous scrubbing and refining process. The producer gas was successfully scrubbed so that the catalyst contaminants contained in the gas (e.g., NH4 and O2) were lower than 1 ppm. This study involved over 2000 h of biomass syngas trials at the pilot plant and achieved objectives to better understand and overcome challenges associated with reactor scale-up. A mass balance closure of ±5% was achieved. Producer gas, which flowed through the system only once (without a recycle loop), had a CO conversion of 59% or greater after being introduced to the novel biochar-supported catalyst. The pilot-scale catalyst bed had a much greater surface area for the gas to flow through than previously tested lab-scale reactors (approximately 15 times more surface area), which allowed channels to form and flow regimes to be more inconsistent than in the smaller reactor tubes. This accounted for the lower yield, so smaller tubes are suggested to improve efficiency and overall yield.

The dry reforming of methane (DRM) with CO2 has been widely studied due to its important applications in producing of syngas (CO + H2), removal of two greenhouse gases, and upgrading of biogas (mainly composed of CH2and CO2) into value added chemicals. Compared to the noble metal catalysts, the nickel-based catalyst is suitable for industrial scaled-up DRM due to its high activity and low cost. However, nickel-based catalysts have been encountering a significant challenge that is the active metal sintering and coke deposition, leading to the catalyst deactivation and then the poor stability. Nevertheless, it has been reported that the deactivation of nickel catalysts can be suppressed by adding promoters like strong Lewis bases with the enhancement of chemisorb CO2, and like lanthanide elements with the capacity of oxygen storage and release. Aluminum oxide is a commonly applied catalyst carrier own to its good pore size dispersion, high specific surface area and high mechanic strength. Herein, we report that the bimodal NiCeMgAl catalysts with different NiO-loading were synthesized by the refluxed co-precipitation method and were evaluated for DRM catalytic performance. The sample containing 15wt% NiO-loading (Ni15CeMgAl) was found to be active enough at 750 °C with a high CH4 conversion of 96.5%. Ni15CeMgAl catalyst kept its bimodal porosity after reduction and DRM reaction. The evolution of the Ni15CeMgAl catalyst before and after the DRM reaction was investigated by BET, XRD, TEM, and TGA techniques. A schema of the DRM reaction on the bimodal Ni15CeMgAl catalyst was proposed, and the correlation between the structure evolution and catalytic performance change was also discussed.