MOF-derived CoCeO_x nanocomposite catalyst with enhanced anti-coking property for ethanol reforming with CO₂

Up to date, to design the efficient catalysts for CO2 reforming with ethanol is of great challenge due to the severe coke deposition. In this work, MOF derived CoCeOx nanocomposite (CoCe-MOF) with outstanding performance for ethanol dry reforming was successfully prepared. Indeed, the experimental results revealed that ethanol conversion was 97% with a H-2/CO ratio of ca.1 and negligible acetone formation (0.4 mol%) at 550 degrees C which was better than that of Co3O4/CeO2 synthesized by impregnation technique. Moreover, no obvious deactivation was observed even after 40 h time-on-stream tests for CoCe-MOF catalyst. Interestingly, ethanol conversion over CoCe-MOF slightly decreased from 99% to 96% while the value over Co3O4/CeO2 sample remarkably declined from 90% to 79% as well as the increase of byproduct formation (acetone from 1.1 mol% to 1.9 mol%). Particularly, the relationship between catalytic performance and morphology structure were investigated in detail by a series of characterization technique such as XRD, H-2-TPR, BET, XPS, TEM, Raman etc. The results demonstrated that the uniform aliovalent incorporation of Co into CeO2 framework greatly improved the physicochemical features of the CoCe-MOF catalyst including the generation of more oxygen defects/surface oxygen species (14,5% of Ce3+ species), stronger Co-O-Ce interaction, lower temperature reducibility etc. Hence, these positive factors might explain its high activity and stability. Eventually, this study might provide a simple method to develop the high-performance catalysts for dry reforming process and other heterogeneous catalytic reactions.