Methanation Reaction over Samarium Oxide Based Catalysts

Abstract

Malaysia produces an acidic crude natural gas which contains 23% of CO2 and <1% of H2S. Thu their presence will corrode the carbon steel gas pipeline system, thus resulting decreasing quality and price of natural gas as well as pollute the environment. Instead, using catalysts for the CO2 methanation have been extensively studied and high potentiality towards converting CO2 gas to methane. The potential of samarium has been widely explored for their ability as a dopant catalyst for CO2 methanation from researchers for metal oxide in CO2 methanation. However, the potential of samarium as a based catalyst in CO2 methanation have not been explored yet. Therefore, in this study the supported samarium oxide doped transition metals catalysts was prepared by wetness impregnation method for carbon dioxide methanation reaction by using trimetallic oxide catalyst because of the lower performance of conversion of CO2 in monometallic oxide and bimetallic oxide catalysts. The catalytic activity of prepared catalysts was tested using in-house built micro reactor coupled with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) toward CO2/H2 methanation. Then, the catalysts were optimized by different calcination temperatures and different based oxide loadings. The potential catalysts of Ru/Mn/Sm (5:35:60)/Al2O3 calcined at 1000 °C and 1100 oC gave > 95 % of CO2 conversion at 300 oC reaction temperature and yielded about 93.46 % of CH4 at reaction temperature of 400 °C. XRD analysis showed the potential catalysts are an amorphous phase, while FESEM analysis illustrated the surface of the catalysts were covered with small and dispersed spherical particles. EDX analysis revealed that there were 0.3 % reduction of Ru in the Ru/Mn/Sm (5:35:60)/Al2O3 ofused catalysts compared to fresh catalysts. Meanwhile NA analysis showed that Ru/Mn/Sm (5:35:60)/Al2O3 catalystattained surface area of 47.38 m2/g.