One-pot synthesis of ordered mesoporous Ni-V-Al catalysts for CO methanation

Preventing both the sintering of Ni particles and the coke formation in supported nickel (Ni) catalysts is a great challenge in catalysis. To address the problem, in this work, we have designed and synthesized a series of ternary Ni-V-Al metal oxide composites with desired structure and composition, for example, the ordered mesoporous structure and various V contents. The catalysts are synthesized via a facile one-pot evaporation-induced self-assembly strategy and are used in CO methanation reaction to produce synthetic natural gas. Our results showed that the Ni-V-Al catalysts with ordered mesopores have better catalytic properties than the impregnation-derived Ni catalysts supported on alumina supports with ordered mesopores or with unordered mesopores. The addition of proper amount of vanadium oxide in the ordered mesoporous Ni-V-Al catalysts further promotes the catalytic activity toward CO methanation. In a 110 h atmospheric-pressure lifetime test, the ordered mesoporous Ni-V-Al catalyst showed significant improvement in both anti-coking and anti-sintering, mainly because of the smaller Ni particle size (<5 nm), the confinement effect of the mesopore channels as well as the incorporation of the vanadium promoter as compared to the catalyst without ordered mesopores. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.