Enhanced activity and durability of Ru catalyst dispersed on zirconia for dry reforming of methane

Dry reforming of methane (DRM) reaction is an interesting and promising way to convert CO2 into valuable chemicals. Various metals have been investigated as active sites for the DRM reaction, and particularly, precious metals have been known to be active without severe coke formation. In this work, we showed that a very small amount of Ru (0.13 wt%) immobilized at ZrO2-SiO2 are very active and stable for the DRM reaction performed at 800 degrees C. When Ru was deposited at the SiO2 support, Ru domain size was relatively large as 6.3 nm. But the Ru size significantly decreased to 1.4 nm when Ru was deposited at the ZrO2-SiO2 support. The strong metal-support interaction between Ru and ZrO2 was also confirmed by TPR and XANES measurements. The Ru/ZrO2-SiO2 catalyst presented no coke formation whereas filamentous carbon was deposited at the Co-Ru/ZrO2-SiO2 catalyst. The Ru/ZrO2-SiO2 catalyst enabled the DRM reaction stably at 800 degrees C without significant reduction in activity even at high space velocities of >100,000 ml/g(cat).h. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.