LAUSR

Abstract NiCo-Mg/Al-1.7, Ni-Mg/Al-1.6, Ni-Mg/Al-0, and NiCo-Mg/Al-0.3 Ni-based catalysts were used to test their performance in CO 2 reforming of CH 4 reaction for a coal gas feed mainly containing CO and H 2 as well as CO 2 and CH 4 at 900 °C and the ambient pressure. Compared to the performance in ideal feed of CO 2 and CH 4 balanced with N 2 , the smaller reaction rate in the coal gas observed over all the catalysts was barely due to the lower concentration of CO 2 and CH 4 in the feed. NiCo-Mg/Al-1.7 catalyst showed the highest activity and stability among the four catalysts owing to its right metallic NiCo alloy sites to activate CH 4 and the strong basic sites to activate CO 2 . The TPO of the spent catalyst after 24 h TOS showed no carbon formation. The other three catalysts facilitated more or less various formats of carbon formation depending on different surface properties, leading to the decay of catalytic activity along the TOS. The coal gas feed that contains very small amount of O 2 helped mitigate the formation of the inactive graphitic carbon, possibly because O 2 burned the carbon of this kind. This study will improve the efficiency of using coal gas by converting its to-be-emitted CO 2 and CH 4 into valuable CO and H 2 .