High Capacity Iron-poor Ferrites for Syngas Generation from Carbon Dioxide and Methane
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Date
2024-12
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Carbon conversion will play a critical role in preventing global average temperatures from surpassing 1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels. Dry reforming of methane converts carbon dioxide and methane into syngas (CO + H2), an important building block for the production of liquid fuels, ammonia, methanol, and steel. However, no commercial processes exist for dry reforming of methane mainly because of catalyst deactivation via carbon deposition and the high cost of noble-metal-based catalysts.
Chemical looping technology decouples the dry reforming of methane into two steps: methane reduction of a metal oxide, and carbon dioxide splitting by the reduced metal oxide. Ferrites are a common type of oxide material in chemical looping known for their high oxygen exchange capacity and low material cost. Iron is usually the major active redox element in ferrite materials such as NiFe2O4, but recent thermodynamic modeling results have predicted that iron-poor ferrite materials have greater oxygen exchange capacities than traditional iron-rich ferrites for dry reforming of methane. Here we present the first experimental demonstration of this counterintuitive oxygen exchange capacity dependence on ferrite iron ratio in chemical looping dry reforming of methane. Thermogravimetric analysis was conducted on supported Co-ferrites of various Fe ratios for isothermal dry reforming of methane at 700°C. As predicted by the theoretical models, iron-poor ferrites exhibited greater oxygen exchange capacities than iron-rich ferrites. Additionally, using ZrO2 as a support material was found to maximize chemical reaction kinetics without inducing carbon deposition. These findings contribute to future materials design and scale-up for high capacity and energy efficient chemical looping dry reforming processes.
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Chemical looping, Catalysis, Sustainability, Dry reforming, Syngas, Ferrite