The evaluation of autothermal methane reforming for hydrogen production over Ni/CeO2 catalysts

Nanocrystalline Ni/CeO2 catalysts with various loadings of Ni (10, 15, 20, and 25%) were synthesised by a facile solvent deficient precipitation method for methane autothermal reforming process. The characterisation techniques such as XRD, BET, TPH, H2-TPR were carried out on fresh and spent samples to investigate the catalytic properties of the Ni/CeO2. On the basis of characterisation results, the 20% Ni/CeO2 performs the best activity among the catalysts with different Ni contents. The optimal reaction conditions for autothermal methane reforming has been investigated by evaluating the effect of reaction parameters including the reactivity temperature, the gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) and H2O/CH4 (S/C) and O2/CH4 (O/C) molar ratios. The stability of 20 wt% Ni/CeO2 catalyst at 700 °C is examined for 20 h on-stream reaction. It reveals that the methane conversion starts a graduate decrease trend from the second 10 h, which is found to be because of the sintering of Ni nanoparticles by TPH and BET analysis.