Spatially Formed Tenacious Nickel-Supported Bimetallic Catalysts for CO2 Methanation under Conventional and Induction Heating.

The paper introduces spatially stable Ni-supported bimetallic catalysts for CO2 methanation. The catalysts are a combination of sintered nickel mesh or wool fibers and nanometal particles, such as Au, Pd, Re, or Ru. The preparation involves the nickel wool or mesh forming and sintering into a stable shape and then impregnating them with metal nanoparticles generated by a silica matrix digestion method. This procedure can be scaled up for commercial use. The catalyst candidates were analyzed using SEM, XRD, and EDXRF and tested in a fixed-bed flow reactor. The best results were obtained with the Ru/Ni-wool combination, which yields nearly 100% conversion at 248 °C, with the onset of reaction at 186 °C. When we tested this catalyst under inductive heating, the highest conversion was observed already at 194 °C.

Catalytic Gas-Phase Glycerol Processing over SiO2-, Cu-, Ni- and Fe- Supported Au Nanoparticles.

In this study, we investigated different metal pairings of Au nanoparticles (NPs) as potential catalysts for glycerol dehydration for the first time. All of the systems preferred the formation of hydroxyacetone (HYNE). Although the bimetallics that were tested, i.e., Au NPs supported on Ni, Fe and Cu appeared to be more active than the Au/SiO2 system, only Cu supported Au NPs gave high conversion (ca. 63%) and selectivity (ca. 70%) to HYNE.

Ni-Supported Pd Nanoparticles with Ca Promoter: A New Catalyst for Low-Temperature Ammonia Cracking.

In this paper we report a new nanometallic, self-activating catalyst, namely, Ni-supported Pd nanoparticles (PdNPs/Ni) for low temperature ammonia cracking, which was prepared using a novel approach involving the transfer of nanoparticles from the intermediate carrier, i.e. nano-spherical SiO2, to the target carrier technical grade Ni (t-Ni) or high purity Ni (p-Ni) grains. The method that was developed allows a uniform nanoparticle size distribution (4,4±0.8 nm) to be obtained. Unexpectedly, the t-Ni-supported Pd NPs, which seemed to have a surface Ca impurity, appeared to be more active than the Ca-free (p-Ni) system. A comparison of the novel PdNPs/Ni catalyst with these reported in the literature clearly indicates the much better hydrogen productivity of the new system, which seems to be a highly efficient, flexible and durable catalyst for gas-phase heterogeneous ammonia cracking in which the TOF reaches a value of 2615 mmolH2/gPd min (10,570 molNH3/molPd(NP) h) at 600°C under a flow of 12 dm3/h (t-Ni).