The effect of lanthanide promotion on catalytic performance of sol-gel Ni/Al2O3 catalysts in the CO2 dry reforming of methane

The CO2 reforming of methane (dry reforming) has been extensively studied on supported nickel based catalysts due to its low cost and high availability (Bradford and Vannice 1999). There is strong evidence in previous studies to suggest that there is an improvement in Ni based catalysts by addition of lanthanide series promoters (Kapokova et al. 2009). These detailed studies were conducted based on some excellent preliminary results that were recently obtained using 2wt% ytterbium (Yb) as a promoter for a Ni/Al2O3 catalyst used in the dry reforming of methane (Amin et al. 2010). Hence this study focuses on a full series of Ni/Al2O3, each doped with 2wt% of a lanthanide element and compared these for dry reforming of methane.