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

Developing high performance catalysts for the low temperature CO2 reforming with methane (CRM) reaction is a challenge due to the 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 a size effect from tiny Ni nanoparticles to enhance CRM performance and a 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 the Ni@SiO2-CeO2-W catalyst with smaller ceria size exhibited higher performance and lower carbon deposition than the Ni@SiO2-CeO2-E catalyst with bigger ceria size, because the smaller ceria nanoparticles activated more CO2. This work provided a simple strategy to deposit small sized ceria on the Ni@SiO2 catalyst surface for the performance enhancement of low temperature CRM.