A novel Ni-MoCxOy interfacial catalyst for syngas production via the chemical looping dry reforming of methane

Modulating the oxygen-metal interface that enables efficient and selective C-H activation remains challenging. Herein, we present a novel MoCxOy oxygen carrier for syngas production via the chemical looping CH4-CO2 reforming (CL-DRM) reaction. Molybdenum car-bide additive induces the re-dispersion of Ni particles from Al2O3 surface to a-MoC driven by the strong interaction between Ni and a-MoC. A dynamic structure transformation between MoCx and MoCxOy occurs and new Ni-MoCxOy interfaces form during the redox cycling, which is discovered to be crucial for the low -temper-ature CH4 activation using surface construction experiments and in -situ spectroscopic methods. As a result, Ni-(a-MoC)/Al2O3 exhibits near 100% selectivity to syngas with a H2/CO ratio of 2:1 at 500 degrees C, which is a significantly lower temperature than that of con-ventional systems. This study first employs molybdenum carbide as an oxygen storage material (OSM) in CL-DRM reaction, paving the way of utilizing transition metal carbides as OSMs in chemical looping processes.