Abstract:
The abundant presence of natural gas reservoirs and ease to convert it with less amount
of greenhouse gasses exhaust to useful chemical products make it profitable. Catalytic
partial oxidation of methane (POM) is an excellent process for converting methane to
various useful chemical compounds and mitigating environmental hazard that are due
to the increasing methane concentration in the atmosphere. The most important step in
POM is the formation of the synthesis gas. The objective of this study is to utilize BFA
as green catalyst support to produce syngas via partial oxidation of methane (POM).
BFA was modified using laboratory synthesized La2O3 and loaded nickel (Ni) as active
metal through the wetness impregnation technique. The Ni/La2O3-BFA catalyst was
characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM),
energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and
Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to investigate its suitability for POM
reaction. Due to the existence of active Ni species and BFA as the major support, the
characterization results indicated greater dispersion of Ni metal over support material,
improved thermal stability during high temperature POM reactions, and decreased
coke deposition. The presence of various metal oxides such as Al2O3, Fe2O3, MgO,
and SiO2 in BFA makes it a more suitable support material for POM. The synthesized
Ni/La2O3-BFA demonstrated superior catalytic activity over La2O3-BFA and BFA.
The synthesized Ni/La2O3-BFA catalyst remained stable for 30 h time on stream (TOS)
during POM at 850 ℃. The experimental study demonstrated that the addition of
La2O3 promoter and active metal Ni to the BFA improved the CH4 conversion from
55% to 85% and consequently improved H2/CO ratio from 1.4 to 2.0. The catalytic
performance of BFA supported catalyst shows its potential to be adopted for catalytic
application, that is a greener, economical, and waste-based alternative to other
supported Ni-based catalyst and provide a sustainable solution for decreasing methane
emissions.
