Study of the Impact of Y2O3 Support Synthesis on Carbon Dioxide Methanation Catalyst Applications

The present work reports on the fine-tuning of the composition of yttrium oxide as a support for carbon dioxide methanation (CME) catalyst applications. Using a suite of analytical techniques (X-ray diffraction, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area analysis, mercury porosimetry, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy), we examine the impact of the synthetic parameters, for example, calcination temperature, on the resulting properties of Y2O3 supports. Novel yttria-based carriers were used to produce a series of Ni/Y2O3 catalytic systems that were evaluated under fixed-bed CME conditions. We observe a superior specific activity of Ni/Y2O3 catalysts in comparison with a commercial Ni-based benchmark and assign this performance of the former to the stabilizing effect of the Y2O3-support on the active component.