Nickel-Catalyzed Dry Reforming of Methane via Modulating the Zirconia Shapes

Graphical The shape of zirconia hosts can tune the nature of active nickel species and the number of lattice oxygen species, which strongly influences the reaction and coking rates in the dry reforming of methane. The shape of the carriers has a profound impact on the catalytic performance of metal-supported catalysts. Herein, ZrO 2 of different shapes (nanorods-like, spherical or irregular nanoparticles, demoted as RZ, SPZ, and IPZ, respectively) are adopted to disperse Ni species to assess the shape effects on the catalytic performance in dry reforming of methane. To this end, the fresh and spent catalysts are thoroughly characterized by multiple techniques including N 2 sorption, powder X-ray diffraction, temperature-programmed reduction with H 2 , thermogravimetric analyses, transmission electron microscopy, Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies. It is revealed that the reducibility of NiO species follows the orders of Ni/RZ