High-performance of nanostructured Ni/CeO2 catalyst on CO2 methanation

Cost-effective CO2 conversion to highly demanded fuels or chemicals is challenging. Accordingly, a nanostructured Ni/CeO2-SGM catalyst synthesized by a simple sol-gel method was developed to make progress in this area for CO2 methanation. CO2 conversion reached 80.5 % and the achieved CH4 selectivity was as high as 95.8 % even at a temperature as low as 250 5 C under a high gas hourly space velocity of 40,000 mLg.(-1).h(-1) for 106 h over Ni/CeO2-SGM. The activity of Ni/CeO2-SGM is 2-48 times of the state-of-the-art Ni/CeO2 catalysts. It was found that the high-performance mainly results from a formate pathway via a *CHO intermediate along with the significant synergy of efficient dissociation of H-2 by small nickel NPs and the strong adsorption and activation of CO2 by CeO2 support. The findings with the performance of nanostructured Ni/CeO2-SGM and the associated reaction mechanism, will be significantly beneficial to development of new generation of CO2 methanation catalysts.