Feasibility Study of Carbon Dioxide Methanation: Assessment of Various Supported Nickel Catalyst

Carbon dioxide (CO2) management is vital for ensuring the economic and environment viability for monetization of high CO2 gas field. Apart from the great technical challenge in separating high concentration of CO2 in gas field economically, the management of separated CO2 is a fine balance between the sink-in value by sequestration and creation of value via conversion to product, constrained by the thermodynamic challenge in breaking the stable CO2 molecule. Conversion to methane is one the exploratory idea due to ease of integration to current product line-up of PETRONAS. Catalytic conversion of CO2 to methane are reported here over various supported nickel base catalyst, namely ZrO2, La2O3, and Al2O3 at temperature ranging from 300 to 400°C under atmospheric pressure. The catalysts with fixed Ni loadings were prepared by wet impregnation technique, characterized and their performances were evaluated in a parallel reactor under Sabatier-based CO2 conversion. Reaction temperature and GHSV were taken into account as two important parameters with fixed H2/CO2 molar ratio. Experimental results indicate that among all catalysts, Ni/Al2O3 give the highest CO2 conversion of 74% and high CH4 selectivity of 99% at temperature of 380°C and GHSV 10000 h-1. This asserted Ni supported on Al2O3 as a potential catalyst for CO2 conversion and promising methanation performance over a low cost catalyst.