Partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas over Ni-supported ceria catalyst

Partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas (a mixture of H2 and CO) over 5 wt.% Ni/CeO2 catalysts has been studied in a fixed bed down flow reactor. The catalyst has been characterized by XRD, N2-sorption, SEM, TEM, ICP-AES and XPS data. It is found that the Ni-CeO2 catalyst can activate methane at 500 oC, and with increase in temperature the conversion increases up to 86.1% at 800 oC. The H2/CO mole ratio is almost constant at 1.9 in the temperature range from 500–800 oC. The activity of the catalyst remains constant till 30 h, which is the main advantage of the present catalyst. Various reaction parameters like temperature, time-on-stream and GHSV are studied in detail.