Dry reforming of methane on Ni/mesoporous-Al2O3 catalysts: Effect of calcination temperature

Catalysts of Ni supported on home-made mesoporous alumina (Ni/M-Al2O3) were prepared via facile incipient impregnation method and calcined under different temperature (500–800 °C). Compared with catalysts of Ni supported on commercial alumina, they showed much higher conversion and lower carbon deposition in methane dry reforming (DRM). Among the catalysts, Ni/M-Al2O3-700 exhibited the highest DRM activity, with 77.6% CH4 conversion and 85.4% CO2 conversion at 700 °C. TPR revealed that almost all the Ni was in the form of NiAl2O4 spinel after calcination at 700 °C. Due to the strong metal-support interaction of NiAl2O4 structure, the Ni crystal size of Ni/M-Al2O3-700 after reduction was around 5 nm. TGA and TEM results showed its carbon deposition after 20 h DRM test was only 3.8% and mainly in the form of amorphous carbon. This work indicates that the formation of NiAl2O4 spinel is beneficial to activity and stability towards DRM reaction and controlling calcination temperature is crucial.