Effectiveness of Ru/Mg/Ce Supported on Alumina Catalyst for Direct Conversion of Syngas to Methane: Tailoring Activity and Physicochemical Studies

The century of urbanisation and industrialisation had a great impact on the environment due to the rapid growth of the flue gas sectors. Thus, green technology is enforced to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) gas into methane (CH4) gas as an alternative fuel in electricity generation, particularly coal and natural gas sources. Cerium (Ce) was recognised as one of the most basic and unique redox characteristics utilised in the promising methanation reaction among catalysts used. The trimetallic catalyst used in this work was prepared with Ce as the based catalyst and ruthenium/magnesium (Ru/Mg) as the impregnated metal. Response surface methodology projected the CO2 conversion to be less than 0.3% of the experimental value of 78.82% using the indicated parameters of 593 °C calcination temperature and 61 wt.% ratios. Ru/Mg/Ce/Al2O3 catalyst with 60 wt.% of Ce loading calcined at 600 °C produced 58.08% of CH4. The characterisation results revealed that CeO2, Mg(Al2O4), and RuO2 species were the active species for CO2 methanation selectivity, as observed in XRD and XPS analyses. The mesoporous structure and particle agglomeration resulted in a surface area of 147 m2/g.