Aerosol-assisted one-pot synthesis of mesoporous nickel-alumina catalyst for dry reforming of methane

Abstract

Dry reforming of methane is an attractive reaction since it utilizes two main greenhouse gases to produce synthetic gases. For the scale-up of this reaction, the most suitable active metal is nickel due to its prominent reactivity and low cost when compared to high-priced noble metals. The major weak points of nickel metal-based catalyst are severe coke formation and sintering of nickel metal at the high temperature reaction condition. Furthermore, typical catalyst preparing steps of support synthesis followed by metal deposition are time consuming and have disadvantage of structure collapse due to serial high temperature heat-treatment. Herein, we report the one-pot synthesis of mesoporous Ni-loaded alumina catalyst by aerosol-assisted evaporation induced self-assembly (AA-EISA) for dry reforming of methane. This method is characterized by one-pot support structuring and metal precursor positioning process done within a few seconds by spray pyrolysis technique. To separate Ni phase from alumina phase counterpart including alkali earth metal, hydrophobic nickel precursor was introduced with amphiphilic triblock copolymer as the structure directing agent. Structural characteristics of mesoporous Ni-loaded alumina catalyst were revealed to have randomly distributed worm-like internal pore structure with Ni nanoparticles confined in the pores. The developed catalyst was further applied for the catalytic reaction of dry reforming of methane.