Low Temperature CO2 Reforming with Methane Reaction over CeO2-Modified Ni@SiO2 Catalysts.

Developing high performance catalyst for low temperature CO2 reforming with methane (CRM) reaction is a ground challenge due to occurrences of metal sintering and carbon deposition. In this study, we synthesized CeO2 modified Ni@SiO2 catalysts with excellent properties of sintering-resistance and low carbon deposition for high performance low temperature CRM. The Ni@SiO2-CeO2 catalysts displayed size effect from tiny Ni nanoparticles to enhance CRM performance, confinement effect from silica encapsulation to limit Ni sintering, and exhibited oxygen storage capacity from ceria to reduce carbon deposition. Performance and characterization results revealed that Ni@SiO2-CeO2-W catalyst with smaller ceria size exhibited higher performance and lower carbon deposition than Ni@SiO2-CeO2-E catalyst with bigger ceria size, contributing to the smaller ceria nanoparticles activated more CO2. This work provided a simple strategy to deposit small sized ceria on Ni@SiO2 catalyst surface for performance enhancement of low temperature CRM.