Nano-scale sulfur-tolerant lanthanide oxysulfide/oxysulfate catalysts for water–gas-shift reaction in a novel reactor configuration

• Nano-scale lanthanide oxysulfide/oxysulfate particles were synthesized for WGS.
• The nanocatalysts showed high surface area and good adhesion to a ZrO2 support.
• The nanocatalysts showed significantly enhanced activity for WGS reaction.
• Eu2O2S catalyst showed improved sulfur-tolerance and fast recovery time.
• The nanocatalysts showed high H2 production rate with low catalyst loading.

We synthesized and tested nano-scale lanthanide oxysulfide/oxysulfate catalysts for water–gas-shift (WGS) reaction. No existing literature has applied these nanoparticles with unique morphologies as heterogeneous catalysts in WGS. The motivation behind our endeavor is to investigate whether the unique morphologies from the synthesis approach can increase catalyst activity of lanthanide oxysulfide/oxysulfate catalysts, which are good catalysts for WGS in both sulfur-free AND sulfur-laden environments, but face the challenge of low activity in micro-scale regime. All three nanocatalysts showed significantly enhanced catalyst activity. Finally, sulfur tolerance testing with Eu2O2S demonstrated dampened, but still high CO conversion, which recovered from sulfur influence rapidly.

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