Enhanced low-temperature CO2 methanation activity on plasma-prepared Ni-based catalyst

•Plasma treatment increased Ni dispersion and reducibility of the catalyst.•Plasma treatment increased CO2 adsorption capacity, especially at low temperature.•Ni/CeAl-p had higher activity than Ni/Al-p, Ni/CeAl-c and Ni/Al-c due to the synergistic effect of plasma treatment and CeO2 additive.

In this paper, the Ni-based catalysts supported on Al2O3, CeO2 or CeO2–Al2O3 supports were treated by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma method and calcination method respectively. It was found that DBD plasma is an efficient alternative approach for the Ni-based catalyst preparation, getting the Ni catalyst with higher Ni dispersion, NiO reduction degree and CO2 adsorption capacity. The Ni/CeO2–Al2O3 after the plasma treatment showed much higher CO2 desorption capacity and CO2 methanation activity at low temperature than the Ni/CeO2–Al2O3 catalyst after calcination method. The effect of additive CeO2 and plasma treatment was discussed respectively and we found that their synergistic effect resulted in good CO2 methanation performance on Ni/CeO2–Al2O3 catalyst.

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