Enhanced activity and durability of Ru catalyst dispersed on zirconia for dry reforming of methane

Dry reforming of methane (DRM) reaction is an interesting and promising way to convert CO₂ into valuable chemicals. Various metals have been investigated as active sites for the DRM reaction, and particularly, precious metals have been known to be active without severe coke formation. In this work, we showed that a very small amount of Ru (0.13 wt%) immobilized at ZrO₂-SiO₂ are very active and stable for the DRM reaction performed at 800 °C. When Ru was deposited at the SiO₂ support, Ru domain size was relatively large as 6.3 nm. But the Ru size significantly decreased to 1.4 nm when Ru was deposited at the ZrO₂-SiO₂ support. The strong metal-support interaction between Ru and ZrO₂ was also confirmed by TPR and XANES measurements. The Ru/ZrO₂-SiO₂ catalyst presented no coke formation whereas filamentous carbon was deposited at the Co-Ru/ZrO₂-SiO₂ catalyst. The Ru/ZrO₂-SiO₂ catalyst enabled the DRM reaction stably at 800 °C without significant reduction in activity even at high space velocities of >100,000 ml/g_cat·h.