Effect of sintering additives on catalytic performance of LaCrO3-based catalyst for methane cracking

Abstract

The present study explored the use of solid oxide fuel cell's LSCM/YSZ anode material as a catalyst to enhance methane cracking due to the stability of such material in the reducing and oxidizing atmosphere. In addition, there is low carbon deposition on the LSCM/YSZ anode using methane as a fuel, increasing the catalyst's durability. In this study, LSCM/YSZ will be used as the self-supported catalyst for methane cracking to investigate the durability and stability by optimizing the catalyst preparation parameters. The transition metal nickel was doped into the B-site of LSCM to enhance the LSCM/YSZ catalyst's catalytic performance. This was done through a modified solid-state reaction, i.e., the aqueous gel-casting method. In addition, the catalytic performance was investigated. The investigations were conducted through a series of experiments under different conditions and examined with visual and data analysis to deduce the durability, stability, and catalytic performance. In this project, we will be making use of ~40 wt. % Ni-doped LSCM and 50 wt.% of YSZ. After collecting the data, GC's results during characterization show that the 30Ni-LSCM/YSZ's methane conversion rate increases over time under the flow rate of 50sccm methane gas as the testing gas and at a temperature of 750˚C running for several hours. Contrarily, 25Ni-LSCM/YSZ running under the same setting exhibits a highly stable methane conversion rate over time. Therefore, we deduce that 25Ni-LSCM/YSZ has much better stability and durability than 30Ni-LSCM/YSZ. More experiments were conducted in different sintering parameters such as sintering temperature (1450˚C, 1475˚C), testing temperature (750˚C, 800˚C, 850˚C), and the grinding timing (2 h, 4 h) in order to obtain an optimal result.