Dry reforming of methane for syngas production over noble metals modified M-Ni@S-1 catalysts (M = Pt, Pd, Ru, Au)

High tendency to sinter and carbon deposition becomes the choke point of Ni-based catalyst for its performance optimization in syngas generation via dry reforming of methane (DRM). Uniting the encapsulation of support with the construction of alloy interfaces, is a bright strategy to protect metallic Ni sites and synthesize highly efficient and stable Ni-based catalyst. Herein, M-Ni@S-1 catalysts (M = Pt, Pd, Ru, Au) with the same noble metal content (0.5 wt%) rather than moles were fabricated, and evaluated in DRM process. Results reveal that the type of noble metals influences the cooperating effect of the formed M − Ni alloy interface and support encapsulation degree, which achieves the best in Pt–Ni@S-1 catalyst. Therefore, Pt–Ni@S-1 catalyst exhibited outstanding sinter resistance and carbon tolerance as well as high catalytic stability, and obtained the highest methane conversion of approximately 80% at 700 °C and 60,000 mL·min−1·gcat−1 of GHSV. This can attribute to the small particle size of 3 nm, suitable metal-support interaction, abundant surface alkaline sites and stably existed Pt–Ni binary alloy interfaces.