CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Carbon dioxide methanation is an interesting way to reduce greenhouse effect gases emission and, simultaneously, provide a renewable energy source of methane. Ceria and 15 at.% Zr-doped ceria supported nickel catalysts were characterized by means of various techniques (BET, XRD, Raman, H2-TPR, CO2-TPD, O2-TPO, OSC and H2-chemisorption) and evaluated in carbon dioxide methanation. Zr incorporation into catalyst formulation reduced catalyst´s basicity but favored its reducibility, nickel availability and oxygen storage capacity. These characteristics gave rise to an improved catalytic performance both in terms of activity and stability: temperature required to achieve 50% conversion was reduced in 20 °C and low temperature (250 °C) stability was improved in around 8%. Initial rates approach was employed to determine reaction rates and apparent activation energies for CO2 methanation, which resulted in 113 and 121 kJ mol−1for Ni/CeO2 and Ni/Ce0.85Zr0.15O2, respectively.