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

Abstract 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 oC under a high gas hourly space velocity of 40,000 mL·g-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 H2 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.