Efficient syngas production via dry reforming of renewable ethanol over Ni/KIT-6 nanocatalysts

In this work, a Ni/KIT-6 catalyst with the highly uniform Ni dispersion was synthesized by a facile methanol-assisted co-impregnation technique and its activity towards to CO2 reforming of renewable ethanol was depicted for syngas production and CO2 elimination. Herein, its physicochemical features were determined in detail by various characterization technique including XRD, TPR, Raman, SEM and TEM etc. The results revealed the presence of the smaller Ni particles and the stronger Ni-support interaction in the Ni/KIT-6 catalyst compared to the reference Ni/SiO2 sample. More importantly, Ni/KIT-6 catalyst showed the satisfactory activity and stability while a rapid deactivation was noted for Ni/SiO2. Typically, full ethanol conversion was obtained at 550 °C for Ni/KIT-6 and no obvious deactivation was observed after 40 h tests. Indeed, this superior behavior was related to the confinement effect of KIT-6 channels which could stabilize Ni particles under the severe reaction conditions. On the other hand, the smaller Ni species greatly inhibited the coke deposition, especially for the encapsulated carbon. Moreover, the existence of strong Ni-support interaction was also responsible for the anti-sintering of active metal and carbon accumulation. This attractive results might be helpful to design high efficient Ni-based catalysts for chemical conversion of the undesirable CO2.