Activated carbon used in methane dry reforming

What is it about?

Catalysts promote the rate of chemical reactions by lowering the activation energy between reactants and products. For applications in industry and research, supported catalysts are deemed to be more applicable than unsupported catalysts for several reasons, such as high tolerance to sulfur poisoning, ability to be reused multiple times without significant degradation, and higher catalytic activity in certain chemical reactions (e.g., Suzuki–Miyaura cross-coupling reaction). Activated carbon also possesses relatively high chemical inertness, which can avoid unnecessary chemical reactions with the reactant, thus representing a chemically stable material for use as a catalyst support in heterogeneous catalytic reactions. It was thought that application of activated carbon as catalyst support could be a cheaper alternative to substitute for expensive conventional catalyst supports (e.g., alumina and SiO2), since activated carbon is produced from waste and biomass materials that are either low cost or free of charge. We conducted experiments to produce activated carbon from palm kernel shell using both chemical and physical activation with the aim of assessing its potential for use as catalyst support. The activated carbon was then synthesized into a supported nickel catalyst and applied in the methane dry reforming process to evaluate the feasibility of using such PKS-activated carbon (AC) as catalyst support material.

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Why is it important?

The AC materials were also found to have highly porous structure with high surface area (up to 750 m2/g) and pore volume (up to 0.37 cm3/g), suggesting suitability for use as catalyst support, since this can provide many reaction sites for metal atom impregnation. The AC materials were upgraded to supported nickel catalysts (Ni/CAC and Ni/PAC) and applied in methane dry reforming reaction. Ni/CAC showed higher CH4 conversion (43 %), while Ni/PAC was more suitable for CO2 conversion (31 %). Our results demonstrate that both CAC and PAC produced by microwave vacuum pyrolysis of PKS show promise for use as catalyst support material.