Partial Oxidation of methane to synthesis gas over Ni-supported ceria catalyst

Partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas (a mixture of H-2 and CO) over 5 wt.% Ni/CeO2 catalysts has been studied in a fixed bed down flow reactor. The catalyst has been characterized by XRD, N-2-sorption, SEM, TEM, ICP-AES and XPS data. It is found that the Ni-CeO2 catalyst can activate methane at 500 degrees C, and with increase in temperature the conversion increases up to 86.1% at 800 degrees C. The H-2/CO mole ratio is almost constant at 1.9 in the temperature range from 500-800 degrees C. The activity of the catalyst remains constant till 30 h, which is.the main advantage of the present catalyst. Various reaction parameters like temperature, time-on-stream and GHSV are studied in detail.