Sintering and Coke Resistant Core/Yolk Shell Catalyst for Hydrocarbon Reforming

Syngas/hydrogen production via hydrocarbon reforming reactions is crucial. Whereas, they need high reaction temperature to obtain economically feasible hydrocarbon conversions, which renders the active and cheap transition metal based catalysts easy to be sintered, leading to the high carbon deposition rate and gradual degradation of catalytic performance. Therefore, developing sintering and carbon resistant catalysts becomes one of the most important issues for these reforming reactions to be industrially applied. Designing catalysts with core/yolk shell structure turns out to be one of the most effective strategies to solve this issue. Herein, recent progress which has been made in the synthesis method for core/yolk shell catalysts with different shell materials such as SiO2, zeolite, CeO2 and Al2O3 is summarized. Additionally, specific applications of these core/yolk catalysts for various hydrocarbon reforming reactions such as dry reforming, steam reforming and methane oxidation are reviewed with the emphasis on revealing the reasons leading to their outstanding catalytic performance. Lastly, possible research directions in core/yolk shell catalysts are proposed.