Effect of Nonthermal Plasma on the Methanation of Carbon Monoxide over Nickel Catalyst

Abstract

Reduction of carbon monoxide to methane by hydrogen was investigated with a nonthermal plasma reactor in which Ni/alumina catalyst pellets was filled. The effect of reaction temperature, pressure and voltage on the conversion of CO was examined. It was found that the nonthermal plasma significantly enhanced the catalytic conversion of CO. The effect of the nonthermal plasma was especially remarkable at lower temperatures and pressures. At high temperatures, the catalyst itself exhibited very high catalytic activity for the conversion of CO. Since high pressure is unfavorable for creating electrical discharge plasma, the increase in pressure lowered the discharge power, thereby weakening the effect of the nonthermal plasma. With the nonthermal plasma alone, there was no conversion of CO. The reaction products identified by FTIR spectra were CH 4 , CO 2 and H 2 O. FTIR spectra also showed that CO was converted primarily into CH 4 with high selectivity above 90% at most experimental conditions.

Production of methane from carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide in a plasma-catalytic combined reactor system

“…[10][11][12][13][14]. In a similar manner, nonthermal plasma can also promote the catalytic hydrogenation of CO and CO 2 into methane, as demonstrated in a previous study, where it was shown that the plasma signifi cantly increased the catalytic activity, especially at lower temperatures and pressures that the catalyst was not so active [15,16]. In a traditional thermal catalysis, catalysts are activated by thermal energy to go over an activation barrier.…”

The effect of noble metals on catalytic methanation reaction over supported Mn/Ni oxide based catalysts

“…Nickel is a well established catalyst decades ago since they are known to be active in hydrogenation, dehydrogenation, hydrotreating and steam reforming reaction and thus have gained great attention (Richardson, 1982 andAzadi et al, 2001). Nickel oxide has been widely used due to high activity and low cost (Mok et al, 2010). However, most nickel-based catalysts undergo deactivation due to sintering and carbon deposition during reaction.…”

Bio-syngas methanation towards synthetic natural gas (SNG) over highly active Al 2 O 3 –CeO 2 supported Ni catalyst

“…The results of Erdöhelyi et al [20] indicated that the activity of CO methanation was two times higher for TiO 2 supports than MgO. Some researchers suggested that Ni supported on Al 2 O 3 catalysts presented higher catalytic activity than that for Ni/SiO 2 catalysts [21][22][23]. However, the sintering of Ni nanoparticles and carbon deposition formed on the surface of Ni/Al 2 O 3 catalysts at higher temperature results in rapid deactivation [24].…”