For the past year, CSI has been developing its own catalyst for the efficient transformation of CO₂ and methane gas into a synthesis gas, which is then be further catalytically processed into gasoline and other fuels. The overall reaction is:

CH₄ + CO₂ → (C_5-10H_n) + H₂O

The specific methane reforming reaction is:

The technology licensed from the UOS directly complements its own development efforts in this area, the company said.

The major challenges faced by previous industry attempts at developing a successful catalyst include coking (fouling the catalyst with carbon deposits) and continued long-time performance.

The catalytic reaction of CO₂ reforming of CH₄ has been extensively studied over a variety of catalysts of both noble metals and non-noble metals. However, a problem associated with CO₂ reforming of CH₄ is the severe deactivation of catalysts with time-onstream, which is believed to be the major barrier of wide application of the technologies based on CO₂ reforming of CH₄.

—Zhang et al. (2009)

CSI’s development was directed at solving these problems and its research team observed encouraging short-term laboratory results, the company said. However, the UOS technology developed over the past decade by Dr. Hui Wang, professor of Chemical Engineering, and colleagues has demonstrated high performance and reliability, the company noted.

The UOS catalyst achieved 92% conversion with no detectable sintering, no significant carbon deposition, and thus no catalyst deactivation. Dr. Wang’s research team has successfully tested the catalyst for 2,000 hours of continuous operation in a bench top reactor.

Resources

• Haijun Sun Jian Huang, Hui Wang, and Jianguo Zhang (2007) CO₂ Reforming of CH₄ over Xerogel Ni-Ti and Ni-Ti-Al Catalysts. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 46 (13), pp 4444–4450 doi: 10.1021/ie070049e

• Jianguo Zhang, Hui Wang and Ajay K. Dalai (2009) Kinetic Studies of Carbon Dioxide Reforming of Methane over Ni-Co/Al-Mg-O Bimetallic Catalyst. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 48 (2), pp 677–684 doi: 10.1021/ie801078p

• US Patent # 2009/0314993 A1. Catalyst for Production of Synthesis Gas (24 Dec 2009)