Promising Utilization of CO for Syngas Production over Mg- and Ce-Promoted Ni/γ-AlO Assisted by Nonthermal Plasma.

Dry reforming of methane is conducted in a catalyst packed-bed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor aiming to improve the reaction efficiency. The MgO- and CeO-promoted Ni/γ-AlO catalyst is tested to carry out the reaction. An interesting observation is that Ni/MgO_AlO integration provides ∼35 and 13% conversion of CH and CO, respectively. The highest syngas ratio of 0.94 is obtained with Ni/MgO_AlO, whereas the ratio is only 0.57 with Ni/CeO_AlO and 0.64 with bare DBD. In addition, Ni/CeO_AlO offers the highest selectivity (68%) of CO due to the oxygen buffer property of CeO. Finally, the optimal acid/base property is highly desirable for the dry reforming reaction.