Coupling dry reforming of methane with nitric oxide reduction on nickel-based nano-catalysts: the role of C

Today’s society struggles to find an eco-sustainable way to produce fuels. In order to do so, greenhouse gases and pollutants’ concentration emission levels need to be taken into consideration and limited as much as possible. Here is investigated an environmental-friendly process that couples dry reforming of methane and selective reduction of nitric oxide. This reaction transforms carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) into syngas (a mixture of H2 and CO), thanks to the catalytic activity of Ni nanoparticles. Coupling those two reactions allows us to overcome coke’s formation problem, which is known to deactivate the Ni catalyst: by using carbon’s reductive power, it is possible to reduce nitric oxide (NO) into N2. Following this strategy, coke deposition on Ni particles gives us the chance to produce a fuel mixture of syngas while transforming a greenhouse gas (CO2) and reducing pollutant’s emission (NO) . In particular, Ni-based catalysts will been investigated, in form of nanoparticles, trying to find out the effect of the different support and deposition procedure. Various supports have been taken into consideration in order to improve the catalyst’s lifetime and its performance. The nanocatalysts will be prepared by wet chemistry procedures (easy to up-scale), fully characterized (XRD, XPS, TPR, TPO, BET, SEM/EDX), and finally the functional characterization will be carried out.